What next for the government?

Theresa May has defeated her critics by a substantial but not overwhelming margin, strengthening her position in the shortest of terms, but what then?

The prime minister has survived and earns a respite over Christmas. She is now strong enough to think about finally holding a vote in the House of Commons on her Brexit deal, although she probably won’t do so until January.

If she loses it, as still seems likely, there is nothing her party can do to her – under the party rules another vote of confidence cannot be held for 12 months. But her victory tonight does nothing to make the task of getting the deal through parliament easier.

Theresa May’s future

The prime minister, in her speech to Conservative MPs before the vote, said: “In my heart I would have loved to have led us into the next election, but I realise that we will need a new leader with new objectives for the 2022 election.”

That is the Tony Blair device of trading long-term authority for short-term survival. By saying he would fight the 2005 election but not the one after that, he saw off the plotters but as soon as that election was out of the way he was a lame duck.

May’s promise to stand down before 2022 will have reassured those Tory MPs who worried that she might use tonight’s victory to try to stay on indefinitely. Some of them may be sympathetic to her Brexit deal but were horrified at the prospect of the worst campaigner in western Europe leading them into the next election.

For some, time-limiting her premiership was more important than time-limiting the Irish backstop.

Among her critics there were inevitable quibbles about what would happen if there were an election before 2022. But if there is a general election somehow forced in the next phase of the Brexit crisis over the next three months, there probably wouldn’t be time to hold a leadership election anyway.

So May has bought herself enough time to see Brexit through – if we actually leave the EU in March.

The hard Brexiteers

The credibility of the European Research Group, the faction of Tory MPs advocating a “clean” Brexit, has been damaged. Although the number of no-confidence votes was a significant proportion of the total, it wasn’t even close to the number needed to dislodge the prime minister.

After the embarrassment of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s launch of his campaign to trigger the confidence vote a month ago, after which the 48 letters failed to materialise, the ERG has been much mocked for overstating its level of support.

Last week Will Quince, a Tory MP who is a junior ministerial aide, resigned to oppose the Brexit deal, and ERG sources claimed another was going to resign this week, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The problem for hard-Brexit Tories is that tonight’s vote shows the limit of their strength. They may be able to mobilise a few more than 117 to vote against the Brexit deal, but they will always be in a small minority in a House of Commons of 650 MPs.

They say that a no-deal Brexit is the default if parliament can’t agree anything else, but that overlooks that danger – from their point of view – that a majority of the Commons might push Theresa May towards another referendum and possibly cancelling Brexit altogether.

The Tory Remainers

Which brings us to the small band of pro-EU Tory MPs who support The Independent’s campaign for a Final Say referendum. There are only nine of them publicly declared at the moment, but Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP and Independent columnist who advocates a referendum, says he has spoken to a minister who is one of a group in the cabinet who are considering the possibility.

“This cabinet minister’s view is: ‘At least you've got a plan.’ They are part of a group that is deeply opposed to us leaving without a deal,” Umunna said.

If the ERG continues to obstruct May’s deal, as seems likely, then the big question becomes whether or not ministers prepare to postpone Brexit to hold a referendum as their escape from a no-deal scenario.

Jeremy Corbyn’s next move

The Labour leadership faces a similar dilemma. Jeremy Corbyn is reluctant to declare in favour of another referendum. He says he wants a general election, but is holding off tabling a motion of no confidence in the government, which is the only way to secure one.

He knows that he can’t win it without the DUP’s support, which is unlikely to be forthcoming despite their furious opposition to the Brexit deal. But once he’s called the vote and lost it, the question of Labour’s position on a referendum would become unavoidable.

At that point, Corbyn would probably find himself outnumbered in his own shadow cabinet, and forced to go down the referendum route, which John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, seems to have been preparing.

There will be many more momentous votes after Christmas before Brexit is resolved – or postponed.