Liz Truss forgot to vote.
Looking likely by Truss cancelled the vote as a Vote of Confidence, but without informing her Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip, who both resigned on the spot when they found out during the actual debate.
What does the vote of confidence part mean?
“You should vote on this and vote the way I want to show you like me” type thing?
Only for Jacob Rees-Mogg to say on Sky news that a junior member of downing Street incorrectly stated the confidence vote had been withdrawn, and he doesn’t believe for a second that the PM would have withdrawn it. Despite the Pm not having voted.
1 Like
By making a Division (which is the Parliamentary name for a vote) a Vote of Confidence, the government is essentially saying “if you don’t vote for this key government policy, you’re saying you don’t have confidence in the government itself”.
The outcome of a Vote of Confidence going against the government is that the PM has to go to the King and either nominate another PM, or dissolve Parliament and hold a GE, because they have lost the support of Parliament and can no longer govern.
Theresa May fended off a couple of Votes of Confidence in herself, but this has been the first VoC in the government for a while.
1 Like
So Mogg was effectively saying the PM didn’t have any confidence in her own government.
Which sounds about right…
Someone is angry.
3 Likes
We know the PM has already received enough letters of no confidence in herself at the 1922 Committee.
When you do the maths, this means she would have a very difficult job getting any legislation through Parliament even if all this chaos went away tomorrow. She has, in effect, already lost her majority.
The only thing holding this government together now is the fact that if Truss goes (which is now a foregone conclusion) before the party has found a successor it believes can pull back enough support from the general public to win the next GE (whenever that happens), then they will all lose their jobs and the Tory party will be obliterated.
She is a zombie PM now, and the Tory party is frantically fighting off the zombie’s bite.
Is Wikipedia trolling us?
You have to choose which 2022 UK Government crisis you want to read about.
6 Likes
I watched that, slack mouthed. But I haven’t googled him, and he’s a Tory, so probably just as nasty as all his mates.
1 Like
Party politics aside (I can easily see the boot being on the other foot), surely in this day and age there’s a better way to register a vote than being shoved into a room.
1 Like
Wonder if anyone in marginals is brave enough to defect to Labour. Only way to keep their seat come the next general election.
2 Likes
There was during COVID for hybrid working, electronic voting was put in place. After COVID it got ruled out and went back to the usual, file into a chamber to vote
1 Like
Naughty boys and girls who didn’t do as they were told are going to have to go sit in the corner and reflect upon their inactions 
I’d say the reasonable excuse is the fact that right before the division occurred, a Minister announced at the dispatch box that the vote wasn’t a vote of confidence.
2 Likes
It just so happens that this has all come about now that they’ve managed to get Truss’s vote retrospectively added to the list of members voting ‘no’… I imagine the turmoil was originally that they couldn’t outline there would be punishments whilst the PM herself was on the list of people that abstained.
The whips will now be speaking to
Conservative MPs who failed to support the
government.
Because if anything is going to help things that will!
2 Likes
Allegedly, she did not abstain, she was too busy grabbing colleague herself 
3 Likes
Having said she’s a fighter only yesterday, she’s going now… I’m calling it…
2 Likes
I’ve already bet (and lost) my home recently on here, so betting the shirt off my back.
8 Likes