A bad week just got a lot worse for Theresa May.
British prime minister Theresa May will face a no confidence vote in the House of Commons after the threshold of 15% of the parliamentary party seeking a vote of confidence in her leadership has been exceeded.
A ballot will now be held between 6pm and 8pm this evening in the House of Commons.
A challenge is triggered if 15% of the Conservative MPs write letters demanding a confidence vote to the chairman of the party’s ‘1922 Committee’, which represents those politicians who have no government jobs.
If May wins the vote, she will remain in office and cannot be challenged again for 12 months.
If she loses, May must resign and is barred from standing in the leadership election that follows.
In terms of her potential replacements, Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and Amber Rudd have all been mentioned.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1072760171129176067
The votes will be counted immediately after and an announcement will be made in due course.
Of course, this news follows May's deeply unpopular Brexit deal that she said would have been rejected "by a significant margin" if put to a vote in the House of Commons.
This week, May has embarked on a tour of Europe as she desperately tries to renegotiate the Brexit deal with an emphasis on the Irish backstop.
She was due to travel to Dublin this evening for talks with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, before travelling on to Brussels for a summit of EU leaders starting tomorrow.
This follows yesterday's meetings with German chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, European Council president Donald Tusk and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1072759880681967617
