AN emotional Theresa May last night promised she would resign before the 2022 general election in a desperate bid to cling to power.
The PM set the clock ticking on the end of her Premiership as she addressed all Tory MPs last night.
Minutes later, they decided to give her more time in No10 in a dramatic snap confidence vote on her rocking leadership.
But Mrs May took a heavy blow, as 117 Tories refused to back her versus 200 who did – a majority of 83, or 63% of her troops.
Her bitter critics seized on the deep split to insist she would step much within weeks, rather than serving up to three more years.
In an attempt to ease the tidal wave of anger against her handling of Brexit, the PM revealed she was giving up her burning ambition to right the wrong of last year when she threw away the Tories’ Commons majority.
She told a packed Commons committee room: “Look in my heart, I would have liked to lead the Party in the next election, partly because of what happened last time.
“But I realise that the party would like a different leader to take them into that election.”
Instead, she insisted the question they were voting on in her leadership “for now” to get the nation through Brexit, as one minister said she also told the room it was “no time for navel gazing”.
At the same time, the PM insisted she was “listening to colleagues and acting on their concerns” as she said she was doing her “very best” to plot away through the myriad of different Brexit views that Parliament has.
During testy exchanges during the showdown meeting, angry hardline Brexiteer criticss hauled her over the coals.
One MP, Lee Rowley, told Mrs May witheringly: “Stamina is not a policy, Prime Minister”.
Mrs May was also grilled on what further concessions she had wrung out of Brussels, and whether she really was prepared to walk away without a deal – a question she pointedly ducked.
One critic in the room said she was clearly nervous, and started her 5pm address with the gaffe “good morning colleagues”, and her answers were “evasive”.
But loyalists banged the giant committee room’s desks and doors loudly in support, with pro-May Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Soames dubbing her “magnificent”.
The shock confidence vote in her Tory leadership was declared at 7.30am yesterday by Tory backbenchers’ 1922 Committee boss Sir Graham Brady.
He revealed the threshold for it of 48 letters had finally been reached, having hovered on around 40 for weeks but surged in the last few days from MPs irate that Mrs May pulled a doomed vote on her Brexit deal on Monday.
Sir Graham phoned Mrs May at 11pm on Tuesday evening to break the dramatic news to her.
Reacting with a powerful statement on No10’s steps before 9am, Mrs May vowed to fight bid to topple her “with everything I have got”.
Ousting her would mean Britain’s EU exit date would have to be delayed for months by whoever succeeded her, the PM warned.
And she had insisted: “Weeks spent tearing ourselves apart would only create more division”.
The leadership crisis erupted ahead of crucial EU summit in Brussels today, during which Mrs May will plea for better terms on the hated Irish back stop element of her Brexit deal.
The PM was also forced to rip up a trip to Dublin yesterday afternoon to hold key talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar.
Every member of the Cabinet immediately rushed out messages of support and their backing for Mrs May, along with most of her 103 ministers.
Long standing eurosceptic Ian Liddell-Grainger gave an early inkling that the PM would win out among the 100 or so waverers, saying early yesterday afternoon: “I thought about this long and hard. We can’t change horses in the middle of the race”
But other MPs sat on the fence and said they would wait to hear what the PM had to day to them.
Backbencher Michael Fabricant said he wanted to hear from Mrs May that she has found “a solution or an alternative way forward”.
After Mrs May addressed her MPs at 5pm last night, an emotional Home Office Minister Victoria Atkins welled up as she told reporters of the PM’s decision to step down, saying: “It was an emotional moment”.
But her critics questioned her pledge to step down before 2022, after she ducked follow up questions to name a hard date when she would go.
Brexiteer rebel leader Jacob Rees Mogg also insisted she had left key wriggle room in her promise, saying: “She recognised the party doesn’t want her so it wasn’t her intention to stand.
“But intentions can change.”
The PM was seen to have been bolstered earlier by a strong performance at PMQs, after even Labour MPs admitted she had trounced Jeremy Corbyn.
Tory grandee and at bitter critic Ken Clarke – who once dubbed her “a bloody difficult woman – rose to tell the chamber during the session that a leadership contest now was “unhelpful, irrelevant and irresponsible”.
Mrs May’s husband Philip made a rare appearance in the public gallery to watch her, with a No10 aide saying he wanted to give her “emotional support”.
As the two hour-long secret ballot opened last night, a total of 186 Tory MPs had declared their public support for Mrs May.
Just 33 had said they would vote against her.
Other prominent critics of the PM, including ex-Cabinet ministers Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson, refused to say how they had voted.
But amid high skull-duggery, several MPs were claimed to have pledged their support to BOTH camps.
Loyal Tories were last night tweeting snaps of their ballot paper, with one – business minister Margot James – saying she was “proud to have voted in support of the PM”.
Several Tory MPs reported to have been inundated with messages from party members and normal constituents for them to back Mrs May.
MPs filed into Committee Room 14 to place their vote, after being asked to show their photographic ID passes.
Officials from the 1922 Committee, the backbench body that represents all Tory MPs, checked off their names from a list and handed them a numbered ballot paper.
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On it was with the simple question “I have confidence in Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party / I do not have confidence in Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party”.
The Prime Minister placed her vote at 7.05pm.
Asked by reporters how she’d voted she laughed before heading out with security officers.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis moaned as he left the room that officials didn’t know who he was and “wanted to see my bloody pass”.
Theresa in ‘victory’ lap
THERESA May had to lap Parliament Square ahead of Prime Minister’s Questions after the gates did not open.
Her convoy directed her bomb-proof armoured Jaguar XJL to do a loop of Parliament Square before police on Carriage Gates eventually opened the doors.
Twitter users had joked that it was “a bit early for a victory lap” ahead of the vote.
It was her second car gaffe after she was locked in her limo before meeting Angela Merkel in Berlin on Tuesday.
Her embarrassed security staff battled for 12 seconds to open the PM’s door.
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News Pictures Theresa May vows to carry on with Brexit despite ‘huge blow’ of rebel vote as clock ticks on end of premiership
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