Ministers split over whether May should soften Brexit deal after defeat

Conservative MPs voiced shock and concern at the scale of the defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, as cabinet ministers split over whether the prime minister should prioritise her overtures towards the Democratic Unionist party or Labour MPs.

“I hoped for less than 100,” one minister said. “The numbers really are unbelievable. But it does show that is the absolute limit to the hard Brexiter support.”

Should the prime minister win her no-confidence vote on Wednesday, May said she would seek to find a consensus across the house by speaking to various factions in the Tory party, as well as senior opposition politicians. “We want to leave with a deal and we want to work with others who share that,” May’s spokesman said.

Shell-shocked cabinet ministers were expected to renew a push for May to hold a series of indicative votes on the options before parliament, which one No 10 source said May instinctively opposed. Others would push for her to prioritise getting new and firm commitments from her confidence and supply partners, the DUP.

Other senior Conservative sources voiced strong reservations as to whether May’s red lines, including on a customs union and free movement, would be able to hold in her discussions with opposition MPs.

“We have to go over to Labour on the customs union,” one minister said. “That’s the irony – the result could effectively be a permanent backstop. How can the red lines still stand? She is going to have to choose.”

Opinion among backbenchers was sharply divided in the hours after the vote, with Brexiters arguing that a majority could be found for a free trade agreement without the backstop and others said May would need to soften her deal to bring Labour MPs onboard.

“No one can predict anything, it’s like ‘choose your own adventure’ from now on – ‘oh no, we’ve fallen off a cliff’,” one MP joked.

The Tory MP and former attorney general Dominic Grieve said the staggering defeat meant there was no majority anywhere in the House of Commons for any version of Brexit.

“Parliament now needs to come together for the sake of the country,” he said. “Crucially we must bring the people back into this discussion, by legislating for a final say, giving the British public the option to stay and lead with our European partners.”

Tory MPs seeking a second referendum have been exploring a number of options for the coming days, but were cautious about moving too quickly before the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had called a no confidence vote in the government.

Pro-European Tory MPs were also hoping that the death of May’s deal could open the door for soft Conservative support for a referendum.

“There will come a time when we need to push it in parliament, but you have to allow Labour to exhaust the option of a general election,” one said. “There are a lot of Conservative MPs who feel duty bound to vote for the deal first time round. In some ways, this makes it easier for them to start to come over to us.”

The former Tory minister Nick Boles, who has gathered some support for his plans for a Norway-style option with a new negotiated customs union, was blunt about his approach to the talks May has offered to seek a compromise.

It must be the prime minister who makes the approach, he told the Guardian. “She serves parliament – does she come to the people in parliament who have ideas and a substantial body of support?” he said.

Before the vote, May holed up in her Commons office behind the Speaker’s chair to speak to Conservative MPs throughout the day. Sources said she focused on backbenchers and Brexiter “ringleaders”, such as the former Brexit minister Steve Baker.

“The whipping was purely focused on minimising the margin of defeat, trying to get abstentions,” one Brexiter MP said.

One European Research Group (ERG) source said the scale of the defeat had been obvious for months and blamed the whips for their slowness to realise what was coming.

“It might be helpful to remember that when the chief whip came to the weekly ERG meeting the week Chequers was unveiled, he breezily said that if colleagues didn’t like the ‘deal’, they need not vote for it. And here we all are,” the source said.

During the debate the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, hinted he expected May to put a very similar version of the deal to parliament again. “Whatever solution may be fashioned, if this motion were defeated and this deal defeated, this withdrawal agreement will have to return, in much the same form, with much the same content,” he said.

Cox, in an impassioned opening to the debate, said he was deeply disturbed by those MPs who had embraced no deal as the best way forward. “What are you playing at? What are you doing? You are not children in the playground, you are legislators. We are playing with people’s lives,” he said.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the hard Brexiter who chairs the ERG, speaking earlier, suggested the Commons defeat would give May a clear mandate to seek a new deal, rather than insisting on no deal.

He said the prime minister could “go back with a clear mandate to the EU and say: ‘Look, if you want a deal, which is in your interest and for which you get £39bn, let’s do something simpler and easier that means we genuinely leave.’”

Ben Bradley, the Tory MP for Mansfield, who was among the hard-Brexit rebels, said May had the option of reaching out to her own colleagues or to Labour.

“I hope it would be her own colleagues first. When she talks about senior members of the house, she must mean people like Steve Baker and Iain Duncan Smith,” he said.

“There’s a majority in there, for a free trade agreement and no backstop. That would deliver most Tories who rebelled and Labour leavers,” Bradley said. “She has ruled out a referendum, ruled out Norway, ruled out a customs union. So she does not have much room with anyone who wants a softer Brexit.”