If you’re going to help lead a rebellion against your Party’s whip in the Commons, you will want as many of your colleagues as possible to support you – so far, so obvious.
And the revolt against the Government statutory instrument on the “Stormont Brake” earlier today featured no fewer than three Conservative leaders: Iain Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.
We’ve yet to see an abstention figure. These are never definitive (in that they don’t separate those who vote against a measure because they oppose it from those who don’t vote against it because they are ill, abroad or otherwise indisposed). Nonetheless, it would provide some wider context, and is therefore important.
All the same, 22 rebels really isn’t very many – at least by the standard of Eurosceptic revolts of recent years. There’s an element in this revolt of quite a few officers but not very many privates.
The band of 22 appears largely to break down, the former leaders aside, into former Spartans (such as Mark Francois and Andrea Jenkyns), Johnson loyalists (such as Jake Berry and James Duddridge) and serial rebels. (I hope that Peter Bone and Christoper Chope will tolerate my describing them in this way.)
Priti Patel is another officer; so is Simon Clarke – another former Cabinet Minister. The view of some in the lobby and in Parliament this afternoon will be that the European Research Group is a shadow of its former self – if not a busted flush.
I don’t know about that, but Rishi Sunak didn’t end up needing Labour votes to get this regulation through. So this vote must be chalked up as a convincing win for him – and a sign that Johnson and Truss have less support among Tory MPs than one might have thought.