Welsh secretary Simon Hart has denied 148 MPs voting against the Prime Minister remaining as leader of his own party had been a "terrible" night for the Conservative Party. His responses in a radio interview led to a barrage of comments including one describing him as "deluded".
In an interview with Matt Chorley from Times Radio, he denied it had been a "terrible night" for the Prime Minister. When asked he interjected: "I don't think it is."
The journalist then said: "Don't treat me like an idiot. More than 40% of Conservative MPs have voted and they don't have confidence in the Prime Minister."
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Mr Hart responded: "I don't know why that necessarily seemed to be a disaster. If I won my seat by 60% of the vote, I'd be chuffed to bits and you'd be saying it was a decisive victory for me and there wouldn't be any argument about the outcome."
Mr Chorley said: "That's when you're up against Liberal Democrats or Labour. These are Conservative MPs."
Mr Hart responded: "Everybody knows how voting works, the one with the most votes wins, ok? That's how it works. And I think the one thing misunderstood, I respectfully say, is politicians of all parties is we do actually respect the outcome of votes. So you know, we've seen plenty of people express their view tonight. They deserve all of the respect to just do and I will not be falling out with a single one of those 148 people. They've agonised about their vote I imagine and I absolutely respect that."
He was also asked how he continues to back the Prime Minister after the revelations from the Sue Gray report.
Mr Chorley then said: "He broke the law during the pandemic, he had leaving parties when people weren't seeing their dying relatives and he lied about it. Why are you ok with that? Why are you okay with the fact he broke the law he had leaving parties when people can't say goodbye to loved ones and he lied. Why?"
Mr Hart replied: "There was one Covid breach for which he got a fixed penalty?"
"I'm at the liberal end of the scale, I don't actually believe the politician should be subject to a greater sanction than members of the public. He, Keir Starmer or anyone who has fallen foul of the regulations should expect exactly the same penalty as anybody else. No more, no less. He's accepted a penalty for that, and I don't think by the way he should resign.
"I don't think Keir Starmer should resign. I don't think Eluned Morgan, the minister in the Welsh Government should resign over over her FPN and £800 fine. I think there should be one law for everybody.
"Of course, he has to work bloody hard to rekindle that support with the 148 but I think he is more likely than any other politician in this building to be able to do that. He's sort of done it before in other other contexts, and tonight, 60% of our colleagues, a substantial margin, decided that, that they had confidence in him."
Mr Chorley asked him: "What does Boris Johnson need to do?"
Mr Hart replied: "It's getting back to where we were in 2019, before the pandemic, obviously before the Ukraine war, to demonstrate not only to our colleagues here, but also to members of the public, that the things for which we were elected, economic competence, long term vision, all those things that you heard about back in 2019, that we are on course and can do. We will be judged in 2024, I anticipate, not on what went on in Parliament tonight but on whether in a four or five year term, we were able to actually deliver stuff we promised."
He was asked what they are delivering on because "delivering on anything that Boris Johnson wants to do is going to be much, much harder, because you need those people who tonight have said, 'Sack Boris Johnson', you need them to vote for your legislation."
Mr Hart said: "The idea that they're going to sort of vote down legislation about levelling up for example, some of the huge massive investments which in my case in Wales, the idea any Welsh colleague will in a fit of pique vote down those major projects which are going to create jobs, sustainable jobs, meet our net zero target, the idea that they're going to do that because what we're trying we're not like that. We're not like that."
He was then asked about how that worked for Theresa May who won a vote of confidence by a bigger margin than Boris Johnson and was gone within six months.
"With Theresa May there was a very different set of circumstances. She didn't have a majority of any sort and was utterly dependent on the DUP. She also had Conservative Association chairmen from across land writing in demanding her resignation. She didn't win an election which everyone said she would in fact quite the opposite. She didn't win an election, everyone's certainly going to lose by majority of 80. In fact, she went in 17 points ahead, and six weeks later, we were doing a deal with the DUP.
"If anybody can come back, bounce back, show resilience and therefore, in a sense, be a different customer altogether than John Major or, or Theresa May, it's Boris Johnson."
After the interview was played, messages from listeners were read out. One asked: "Who is this deluded lunatic?" Another said: "Tory MPs describing this confidence vote as a success is more embarrassing than if they'd actually lost."
