Theresa May survives a day that was historic only for its self-indulgence

As a nation peered through the gaps between its fingers and tried not to puke at what it was being told was history, it may have caught occasional glimpses into the soul of the kind of person that lives for all this.

There was the very, very junior minister Michael Ellis, sitting on the floor in the gangway of the House of Commons, braying with such sycophantic force in support of Theresa May at Prime Minister’s Questions that he descended into a coughing fit that for a moment looked like it might claim his life.

There was Andrew Bridgen and James Cleverly, on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show, having to be introduced to viewers with the words, “Now I know you two don’t want to talk to each other.” The two men, party colleagues, fellow MPs, one the actual deputy chairman of what was once one of the world’s most revered political parties, just stared straight ahead. Eventually Bridgen announced, “I’ll go” and skulked out of shot.

This, we cannot stop being reminded, is a momentous hour in our nation’s history. And this was the kind of behaviour, from two people reported to be fully grown adults, that would lead to premature ejection from a four-year-old’s birthday party.

Who can blame them, in a way? Regulatory divergence, just-in-time supply chains, security cooperation, access to the Galileo Satellite system: these are just some of the fiendishly complex problems of Brexit that have to be solved in the next 106 days. It’s never going to be done, so why not just jack it all in for another 24 hours of familiar chaos? Who wants reality when you can bang on desks, bray, have your weird little secret ballot, bicker like toddlers on live TV and generally embarrass oneself in front of a truly exasperated nation?

The news broke just after dawn. That after just four weeks of dedicated effort, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group had finally managed to count all the way up to 48, they’d sent in their letters and now Conservative MPs would have to hold a formal vote of confidence in Theresa May.

If, in these rarefied hours, the prime minister wants to look as big and powerful as possible, she should start by having a word with whoever it was that ordered the world’s largest Christmas tree to be placed outside her front door in the full glare of the TV cameras for the duration of a period of inevitable national crisis. That it could have arrived there by van, and not lowered in, perhaps as transport for an extra terrestrial species, seems unlikely.

As she strode out almost unseen behind the lowest of its nine tiers at 08.30 in the morning, she could have easily have been mistaken for a particularly angry looking elf. Statements by prime ministers outside 10 Downing Street are meant to be moments of great national significance. For the last two and a half years, it feels like Theresa May has averaged one a week. Still, at least she has gone easy on us by saying the same thing every single time.

Even now, she was focused on “getting on with the job, building a stronger economy”, and all the other things she will never ever do.

At Prime Minister’s Questions she told Jeremy Corbyn that, “All he wants to do is create division and chaos.” The laughs from the Labour benches were so loud they drowned out those that must surely have come from her own.

As the day wore on, faithful acolytes, many of them Brexiteers, appeared all over the news channels, to warn of the risks of a Corbyn government that they themselves have done so much more to deliver than anything anyone in the Labour party ever could.

They got their meaningful vote in the end, at least, even if it was a day late and on a slightly different subject. In the evening, all 317 Conservative MPs queued diligently along a searingly hot corridor, to cast their vote in collapsible polling booths brought in special bags, flanked by almost as many journalists.

When Theresa May arrived, she was asked by a journalist how she might vote herself, this being a vote on whether or not she had confidence in herself as party leader. She smiled and refused to answer. Oh Theresa, don’t ever change.

It was fitting enough, at 9pm, that this day of chaos, that this brainchild of Jacob Rees-Mogg came to an end in an oak panelled room in a chorus of braying. She had won the vote, 200 to 117. It was a winning margin far narrower than expected, but not so narrow as to wonder whether it had been really necessary to restore the whip to two MPs, Andrew Griffiths and Charlie Elphicke, currently suspended from the party while facing extremely serious allegations.

By the time Theresa May came to give yet another statement, she had formally had the confidence of her party returned to her, yet she appeared drained of it all. She had been forced into making various concessions, most notably about promising not to lead her party in to the next election. Hundreds of MPs heard her make this promise, yet not many agree on what was said. Some said she had expressed no more than an “intention”. Others only that she wouldn’t lead as far as 2022, a somewhat foresighted view when it would be brave to rule out a general election before March.

And at the end of a day that will be called historic solely by those who consider themselves to be historic, nothing, of course has changed. She still has no authority over her party. She still has no hope of getting her Brexit deal through the House of Commons. And now she will go to Brussels to try and secure concessions on the Northern Irish backstop that have been ruled out for months if not years.

By the time the door of No 10 should have clicked shut the TV cameras had already cut away. She could very well be in the Christmas tree right now, counting down to lift off. 105 days to go.