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Yesterday in the Commons. More opponents than supporters of the Prime Minister’s deal on the Conservative backbenchers.

Paul Goodman

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Distinguishing a supportive question to a Minister from the Conservative backbenches from a non-supportive one is necessarily a term of art.

With that cautionary qualification in mind, we offer our best shot at estimating which questions to the Prime Minister from her own Party were supportive, non-supportive, and neutral – for example, requests for information.

We do so simply to get a flavour of where Tory MPs are on the proposed Brexit deal, to which the answer, as you might expect, is “deeply divided”.

This morning’s headlines suggest that Theresa May had a more hostile reception than our breakdown suggests, but you are in a very bad fix as Prime Minister when the number of unsupportive questions outnumbers the number of supportive ones/

Supportive backbenchers

  • Peter Bottomley
  • James Cleverly
  • Alberto Costa
  • Vicky Ford
  • Richard Graham
  • Damian Green
  • Patrick McLoughlin
  • Huw Merriman
  • Andrew Murrison
  • James Heappey
  • Nick Herbert
  • Neil O’Brien
  • Andrew Percy
  • Nicholas Soames
  • Matt Warman

Total: 15

– – –

Neutral

  • Peter Aldous
  • Luke Graham
  • Kirstene Hair
  • Greg Hands
  • Caroline Johnson
  • Marcus Jones
  • Jeremy Lefroy
  • Edward Leigh
  • Maggie Throup
  • David Tredennick
  • Martin Vickers
  • Bill Wiggin
  • William Wragg

Total: 13

– – –

Unsupportive backbenchers

  • Steve Baker
  • Peter Bone
  • Conor Burns
  • Bill Cash
  • Mark Francois
  • Justine Greening
  • Dominic Grieve
  • Boris Johnson
  • David Jones
  • Owen Paterson
  • Mike Penning
  • Dominic Raab
  • Jacob Rees-Mogg
  • Desmond Swayne
  • Michael Tomlinson
  • Ross Thomson
  • Theresa Villiers
  • Sarah Wollaston

Total: 18

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