‘We Must Hold Our Nerve' - Jumpy Tory MPs Plot And Bicker As Chaos Continues

MPs arrived sore-headed and sleepless into Westminster yesterday, many anticipating an imminent vote of no confidence in the prime minister.

- Jessica Elgot, Aubrey Allegretti and Rowena Mason

The opposition was already giddy. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” one Labour MP said. “But my office manager joked: ‘If you don’t go to sleep, Graham Brady won’t come.’”

Some rebel Tories had stayed late at the members-only Carlton Club, suspicious of being spied on amid their plotting. An indignant Nadine Dorries, who was there with her special adviser, said it was only for a long-planned work dinner. Other veteran MPs – no friends of Boris Johnson – had stayed up late too, but in their case to call colleagues to urge caution.

“We must hold our nerve,” one long-time critic of the prime minister said. “There is nothing worse than a wounded prime minister limping on. If these greenhorns trigger it too soon then he will be able to argue – quite rightly – that the inquiry [by the civil servant Sue Gray into Downing Street parties] has not been heard and that he deserves to stay on.”

Another said of those submitting no confidence letters: “They’re jumping sub judice. It’s impossible to control this.”

For the first time in months, the target of Tory anger yesterday morning was not their leader but their newly elected colleagues who convened for the so-called pork pie putsch in Alicia Kearns ’ office on Tuesday night. Even those who agreed with their assessment seemed affronted.

“These people are clearly getting a lot of aggro in their inboxes and they don’t know how to handle it [but] lots of those constituents would never vote for them,” one MP said. “They’re like captives who haven’t been properly socialised; they think they should all be ministers already.”