Only one in five party members appear to support the wholesale readmission of those former Conservative MPs who lost the whip during the passage of the Benn Act.
According to our survey just 12 per cent of respondents thought that the Government ought not to have withdrawn the whip from MPs voting to strip it of control over Brexit. Interestingly, this is a lower share than when we offered our panellists a straight choice: in the previous question more than 18 per cent of respondents said withdrawing the whip was ‘the wrong decision’.
On top of that, fewer than nine per cent believe that Boris Johnson should restore it to any MP who isn’t prepared to fully endorse the Conservative manifesto at the next election.
By contrast, almost a quarter of members felt the whip should be restored in exchange for such an undertaking, and more than one in four do not believe the whip should be returned another any circumstances.
The largest single group, however, were those calling for each of the 21 to be treated on a case-by-case basis, which seems to be the path the Government is taking. Tellingly, only three respondents didn’t have an opinion.