When was the last no confidence vote in UK? What happened to Theresa May - and how many PMs have lost motion

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will face a vote of no confidence on Monday 6 June, after enough MPs submitted letters to trigger a contest.

Sir Graham Brady, the head of the backbench 1922 Committee, revealed he had received the 54 letters from Conservative MPs needed to trigger the poll on Sunday 5 June, informing the Prime Minister that he would face a vote.

This is not the first time, however, that faith has been lost in a Prime Minister and party leader and a vote of no confidence has taken place.

Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May also faced the same vote when she was in office.

So, when did Theresa May face a vote of no confidence, what exactly is a vote of no confidence and what was the outcome of the vote?

Here’s what you need to know.

Who is Theresa May and when was she the Prime Minister?

Theresa May has been the Member of Parliament for Maidenhead in Berkshire since 1997.

She was appointed Home Secretary in 2010 by then Prime Minister David Cameron, a role she served in till 2016.

Theresa May’s time as Prime Minister ran from 13 July 2016 to 24 July 2019. It started and ended as a result of Brexit.

In July 2016, David Cameron resigned in the aftermath of the European Union (EU) membership referendum and Theresa May accepted Queen Elizabeth II’s invitation to form a new administration.

She became the UK’s second female prime minister after Margaret Thatcher, and was the first, and to date the only, woman to hold two of the Great Offices of State.

May decided to step down in July 2019 due to not being able to find a way for the UK to leave the EU which was supported by Parliament.

She remains in the House of Commons as a backbencher.

What is a no confidence vote?

A vote of no confidence is the most direct challenge of a Prime Minister’s leadership, and can be triggered by MPs from all parties.

The vote gives MPs the opportunity to decide if they want the current government to continue, and the outcome can trigger a general election and could see a new prime minister appointed.

When a vote of no confidence is carried out this is done by a secret ballot.

Any MP can propose a no confidence motion, but there’s no guarantee their request will be granted.

The vote needs a majority to pass, and only requires one more MP to vote in favour than the number voting against.

If the government wins the no confidence motion then it carries on as before.

If the government loses, it has 14 days to try to win back the confidence of MPs through another vote and at the same time opposition parties can try to form their own alternative government.

If the government can not win back confidence then a general election will be triggered.

If an alternative government is obvious, however, then convention suggests that the Prime Minister should step down.

How many votes of no confidence were there against Theresa May?

There were two votes of no confidence against Theresa May when she was in office; one from within her own party in December 2018 and one from the opposition in January 2019.

Why was the first vote of no confidence brought against Theresa May?

In December 2018, May postponed the UK Parliament vote on her Brexit deal as she was afraid that it would be rejected.

Her decision to delay this vote prompted enough Tory members of Parliament to try to push her aside.

The secret ballot was triggered by 48 of her MPs who were angry at her Brexit policy, which they said betrayed the 2016 referendum result.

May won the vote of confidence in her leadership of the Conservative Party by 200 votes to 117.

Why was the second vote of no confidence brought against Theresa May?

Just a month after the first vote of no confidence was tabled against Theresa May, in January 2019, another was called against her by then leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.

This came after the government had lost a Commons vote to secure parliamentary backing for the government’s deal for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union by 230 votes on the evening of 15 January.

In that vote, 432 MPs voted against 202 rejecting the deal and represented one of the largest defeats for a sitting government.

This second vote of no confidence was debated on the afternoon of 16 January before it was voted on that evening.

The motion was defeated by 325 votes to 306; a majority of 19.

Corbyn had previously tried to call a vote of no confidence in December 2018, just one week after the result of the first no confidence vote, because of May’s refusal to set the date for the meaningful vote on her Brexit deal before Christmas 2018.

However, the government refused to allow time for the motion to be debated at that time.

How many UK Prime Ministers have been lost to a no confidence vote?

In total, 11 Prime Ministers have lost a no confidence vote.

They are:

• Lord North (1782)
• John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1866)
• Benjamin Disraeli (1868)
• William Ewart Gladstone (1885)
• Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1886)
• William Ewart Gladstone (1886)
• Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1892)
• Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1895)
• Stanley Baldwin (January 1924)
• Ramsay MacDonald (October 1924)
• James Callaghan (1979)

The interval between the 1924 vote of no confidence and the 1979 motion was the longest interval in British parliamentary history.