Theresa May has bought herself some time but key questions still need answering

Has Theresa May done enough to secure her position?

The 200-117 result is in truth finely balanced. It is enough of a win to stave off Theresa May’s immediate resignation, but the rebellion is at a significant level too.

Hard Brexiters such as Mark Francois took immediately to the airwaves to point out, correctly, that over a third of the Conservative parliamentary party had voted against May.

Once the government ministers are excluded, that proportion rises to more than half of the so-called “no payroll” vote.

Theresa May is now a lame duck – too weak to take back control of her party | Martin Kettle Read more

Some called for her to sleep on the result, and – rather than go to Brussels on Thursday for the next round of Brexit talks with the European Union – to resign.

But it is easy to dismiss that sort of talk as sour grapes: in the end May won the contest in front of her and, given the sensitive position of the Brexit negotiations, it is hard to imagine cabinet members calling on her to go with so much unresolved.

What does it mean for the Brexit negotiations?

May should have bought herself a little time, probably a few more weeks. She is due to talk to EU leaders about Brexit over dinner in Brussels on Thursday, and has the opportunity to make headway in securing some sort of reassurance over the unpopular Northern Ireland backstop.

One cabinet minister, who heard her plead for her job before the 1922 Committee on Wednesday evening, said May has to win round the DUP, and persuade the Northern Irish unionists that the Brexit deal can work for them.

That analysis is accurate, but it is a tall order given their opposition. The DUP vociferously argues that the border insurance policy would leave the region closer to the European Union – and hence Ireland – than the UK if it were to come into force.

What about the ‘meaningful vote’?

The result clearly highlights May’s essential Brexit problem. The number of rebels at 117 is eyecatchingly similar to the 100 or so MPs who were planning to vote against her Brexit deal before she postponed the vote the day before its scheduled date of Tuesday.

The Guardian view on Theresa May’s vote of confidence: a reluctant reprieve Read more

It is a blocking minority preventing the current deal, or anything like it, from being ratified by parliament. To win round that amount of rebels, May has to make dramatic progress in her talks with Brussels and persuade the right of her party that she can “bin the backstop”.

However, the European Union has made it repeatedly clear that the legally binding 585-page withdrawal agreement – which contains the Northern Irish backstop – is not up for renegotiation. And without renegotiation, the backstop will endure, and Tory rebels will almost certainly not vote for it.

No 10 has promised that the vote will happen before 21 January, which in negotiating terms is very little time. So the Brexit fundamentals at Westminster remain, for now, unchanged.

How important were the concessions that Theresa May made?

Many Conservative MPs do not want Theresa May to fight another general election as leader, after her disastrous performance in the 2017 campaign in which the party lost its overall majority and control of events.

Hard Brexiters hoped that this would be a trump card in the no confidence ballot because, under the party’s rulebook, May is now immune to a party confidence vote for another year. The fear, they argued, was that May would call a snap general election to end the Brexit logjam – and the Conservatives would suffer as a result.

To head that off, May made two successive concessions. At lunchtime, Downing Street said that the result of the no-confidence ballot would be accepted as a decision for the short term – not any future general election.

But May was sufficiently rattled to offer a bit more when she spoke to MPs at the 1922 Committee meeting a few hours later. It was not, she said, “her intention” to fight the general election due in 2022 – although as Jacob Rees-Mogg was quick to argue, “intentions can change”.

Rees-Mogg has a point, but May nevertheless conceded something more fundamental. The leader of the Conservative party has told her MPs she recognises that she is not an election winner. For a prime minister, that is a serious admission.

Stephen Crabb, a former work and pensions secretary, summed up the problem, saying that Brexit day at the end of March felt like time for a change of leadership, because May’s government is living from week to week, and the party she leads is hopelessly divided.

Theresa May has a chance to conclude a Brexit deal, but even if she can do that, she has failed to secure her leadership for the long term. Just the reverse.

What will the Labour party do now? Can it force the situation?

It would be intriguing if Labour were to call a vote of no confidence in May’s government, given the scale of the rebellion on Wednesday night. If hard Brexiters really want a change of leadership, they could, in theory, side with Labour, although in practice that would be a major step for a Tory MP to take.

Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, that would not immediately force a general election, but rather open a 14-day window for somebody else, almost certainly another Tory leader, to form a new government, which would need to be confirmed by a further vote of confidence.

That alone, might give Labour strategists pause – but the party leadership is also holding back because, if it does not succeed, defeat in a vote of no confidence could play into the hands of second referendum campaigners.

Those calling for a second vote want Labour to conclude that it cannot force a general election – in line with its carefully crafted Brexit policy – and should move on to campaigning for another referendum instead.

But Jeremy Corbyn has always been lukewarm on the idea and there is huge suspicion over the subject among those close to the leader, because many of those keenest on a second referendum in the party have been among his biggest critics in the past.

Labour may act in calling for a vote of no confidence, but it would be a surprise if it did so before Christmas. The party line is that it wants to see May definitively fail in the Brexit talks first and that is more likely to take place in the new year.