No-one in the Conservative Party thinks tonight will end well
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Voting has been underway for an hour and Conservative MPs appear to be in a strange mood.
No one, friend or foe, thinks tonight will end well. MPs awaiting the results are drinking on the House of Commons terrace, a spot that overlooks the river Thames and London Eye.
A handful of opposition MPs are also here to observe the spectacle.
Johnson’s allies believe he will win, but with a margin that is far from convincing and will not allow them to move on from the Partygate scandal.
Johnson-skeptics, meanwhile, are resigned to the idea that the Prime Minister will win and ultimately do more harm to the party.
They are annoyed that the vote is happening today rather than further down the line when potential replacements could be better prepared and the case for removing him more compelling, such as after the end of the month’s by-elections.
The margin of victory numerous MPs have said they are looking at is 80. Anything less than that and Johnson’s overall parliamentary majority is in peril.
Regardless, all sides seem to accept that things are bad and that turning around the fortunes of the Conservative Party will take more than Johnson surviving a vote among his own MPs.
Which, in the long run, means Johnson still has much to fix if he’s to save his premiership.
