Smiling and laughing, Tory MPs came to decide May’s fate

At 8pm on the dot, three black ballot boxes – holding the answer to Theresa May’s fate – were carried solemnly along the ornate upper committee corridor of the Houses of Parliament.

Inside were the ballot slips filled in by 317 Conservative MPs who, over the course of two tense hours, had crossed a box expressing their confidence in the prime minister – or their lack of it.

They had filed down the corridor in ones or twos, smiling and laughing mostly, a few grim-faced, the “most sophisticated electorate in the world”, or so the saying goes, perhaps sarcastically.

Voting had been brisk, about two-thirds of the MPs doing their duty within the first hour, said the volunteers ticking off the names of those going through the door. Perhaps they were there to stop anyone voting twice?

There was a minor protest from David Davis who, as well as refusing to say how he had voted, told journalists: “I can’t believe they asked for my ID card. Don’t they know I don’t believe in ID cards!”

The complaint was echoed by Michael Fabricant, the eccentric backbencher, fresh from a recent naked charity bike ride, who told me: “It was dreadful, they didn’t know who I was,” before adding, “I lied!”

It turned out that all MPs had, indeed, been required to show the photos on their parliamentary passes when entering to vote. It’s almost as if they cannot be trusted.

Just after 7pm, Ms May turned up to vote – although it wasn’t absolutely clear whether that was for or against. Asked by one brave hack, she simply gave an awkward chuckle. Well, it is a secret ballot.

Sometime later, Boris Johnson rushed down the corridor like a man escaping the scene of his crime, to avoid the shouts of “How did you vote Boris?” and “Did you support the prime minister?”

Earlier, the corridor had resembled a central London Tube station at rush hour, as MPs, journalists and various hangers-on jostled for a prime position for the meeting of “the 1922”.

This is the committee of all backbench Conservative MPs, formed in that year, which – this week – was being addressed by the woman about to undergo trial by ballot.

It is tradition that the party leader is welcomed by rowdy desk-banging and foot-stomping even when, for example, large numbers of people in the room are desperate to ruthlessly sack her.

Sure enough, the corridor echoed with those familiar sounds, after the prime minister somehow managed to slip into the room without any of Westminster’s supposedly finest hacks noticing.

We swooped on anyone leaving early, to discover Ms May had delivered her make-or-break message with the clarity and precision for which she is renowned – ie no one could agree what she had meant.

She had apparently begun her address with the words “good morning”, which seemed a strange start given the sun had long since set.

It appeared she had then given a cast-iron guarantee that she definitely did not intend to lead the Tories into the next general election, unless that election came early – in which case she might, except that it almost certainly would not come early ... and, anyway, even if it didn’t come until 2022, she would quite like to still be leader, but recognised that many of her MPs would be “uncomfortable” with that.

Having cleared that up, the prime minister vowed she would rebuild battered relations with the Democratic Unionist Party – but without saying how on earth that would be achieved.

This was quickly hailed by pro-May spinners as the skilful speech that would ensure a triumph, even though it was not, given the serious circumstances, a “razzmatazz and fireworks” effort like, err, Theresa May normally delivers.

The election pledge seemed a bit like me announcing I won’t be captaining the Welsh rugby team at next year’s World Cup – given that no Tory MP thought she would still be leader in 2022 anyway – but there you go.

From within the room, one Conservative MP, boasting he was “running a book” with almost every MPs’ sworn voting intentions, sent a message confidently predicting she would “win by 100”.

A few minutes later, the follow-up arrived: “Health warning: they lie a bit.” Not this time.