This vote marks the beginning of the end for Boris Johnson

There is a school of thought, expressed by Fraser Nelson here this morning, that the Prime Minister’s Tory opponents have shot their bolt too soon, that they should have waited for a couple of by-election defeats and for the emergence of a clear front-runner to replace Boris Johnson, before sending in their letters of no confidence. This analysis is right in that Johnson will very likely gain more votes that MPs vote against him this evening. Whether that really amounts to ‘winning’ is another matter. Historic precedence suggests that Keir Starmer is correct when he asserts that today’s confidence vote marks the beginning of the end for the Prime Minister.

Since 1974, Conservative leaders have faced leadership challenges/votes of confidence on six occasions. On only one of those – John Major in 1995 – did the leader in question survive to fight another general election, and we all know what happened then: he went down to the heaviest Conservative election defeat in a century.