Evening Standard comment: How politics has been changed by the Tory vote; Football for everyone

The last 24 hours of British politics has been a rollercoaster: there have been ups, downs and, at the end of it, we’re back where we started.

That’s the consensus. Is it correct? On the surface, yes. Theresa May is still the Prime Minister; her opponents in her party remain; and the parliamentary arithmetic for her Brexit continues to look impossible.

But the shockwaves from yesterday’s confidence vote are only just starting to be felt.

Mrs May only survived by making a clear pledge to her colleagues that she would not fight the next election.

She had been loath to firm up the vague commitment that she’d given a year ago after the election, when her leadership was also imperilled.

Now that she has, power and authority will continue to flow away from Downing Street. For Mrs May is no longer “in it for the long term”. Even with a promise to go, 117 Conservative MPs voted against her yesterday.

This is a far larger number than Downing Street had hoped.

Appearance matters in politics, and it helped enormously that the number of MPs supporting her had a “2” in front of it — but for the sly move yesterday to restore the whip to two Tory MPs suspended over allegations of sexual misconduct, the vote in her favour would have been 198 or 199, rather than 200.

Clearly “me too” means something different in Tory circles.

Backstop

Mrs May also made a promise to her entire party that she would secure from the European Union a legally binding change to the backstop.

But, as we report, leading figures in the EU have again made clear they will not reopen the withdrawal agreement. As the Attorney General told us, nothing else that can be agreed — such as the side political protocol lodged with the UN that some are floating — trumps the legal force of that agreement. Mrs May has made a promise she cannot deliver.

The rebels know that, which is why the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg keep reminding everyone of what she has said.

They may have been defeated in the ballot, but by winning the support of more than a third of the parliamentary party they will not feel deflated.

They will feel emboldened that they now have the numbers to deploy every procedural trick available to run the clock down in Parliament, so we end up with the no-deal Brexit that this Government foolishly set as the default.

For those Cabinet ministers who backed her in public, but in private think she has to go, the shadow leadership campaigns will become more frenetic.

Every difficult policy decision avoided and each careful word uttered in the Cabinet room will be seen only through this prism. There is no prospect of this Government getting anything else done.

Meanwhile, the Labour opposition will feel more and more like a government-in-waiting. Jeremy Corbyn won’t call a confidence motion because: a) he won’t win it; and b) if he did, he would open the door to the vote on a second referendum that he doesn’t want.

He is exploiting a weakness in the Labour conference motion that the moderates didn’t spot in the drafting committee.

Mr Corbyn wants maximum chaos, like many other participants in this political tragedy.

Yesterday, his Christmas came early as the Conservative Party gave him the present of a Prime Minister clinging on to office but stripped of all power.

Football for everyone

Football is our national game. So why are its grassroots withering?

As we report today, there’s a growing gap between the professional elite and the sport played on local pitches for fun.

Yes, the Premier League puts money back into the game. But why are only one in three pitches rated adequate, when the top of the sport has a TV deal coming worth £4.4 billion from 2019 to 2022?

After all, it’s in everyone’s interest to encourage young players.

The sale of Wembley Stadium was supposed to help but fell through.

We need new plans to keep football winning.