Ballot win for Boris Johnson doesn't mean political escape

It's been coming.

The festival of guesswork, the orgy of speculation.

Not even the Platinum Jubilee could dial it down.

In fact, while the recess and the long weekend meant Conservative MPs weren't together at Westminster plotting, instead they were touring the fetes and the street parties, focus groups festooned with Union flags, and for many the feedback wasn't pretty.

The booing the prime minister was subjected to outside St Paul's Cathedral on Friday was audible proof of what opinion polls have been suggesting, his critics feel.

The simple truth is the Partygate row has incensed lots of people and a growing number of Conservative MPs felt it was behaviour that was impossible to defend.

But this is more than just wine and leaving dos.

It's what it says about the prime minister's character that unnerves so many Tory MPs.

A feeling deep down that they can't trust him, and neither can huge chunks of the electorate.

Some are blunt: either they remove Boris Johnson or voters remove him and them from government at the next election.

I've just been talking to MP John Penrose, the Prime Minister's Anti Corruption Champion, of all people...or should I say former Anti Corruption Champion - he has resigned because, in his view, a prime minister cannot carry on having broken the Ministerial Code, something Mr Johnson insists he hasn't.

Jeremy Hunt, beaten by Boris Johnson in the last Conservative leadership race, has come out against him too.

Plenty - including the rebels - expect Boris Johnson to win tonight.

But an arithmetic win is not the same as a political one.

That is why we are seeing such a coordinated effort by Boris Johnson and his supporters to suppress the number who vote against him as low as possible.

That is why the prime minister - with all the demands on his time - spent an hour this morning signing every single letter to all 359 Conservative MPs, adding personal handwritten notes to many.

A prime minister doesn't do that unless they are gravely worried for their future.

As I bash away at my keyboard right now I'm just back from Parliament where I interviewed two Johnson loyalists: Attorney General Suella Braverman and Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis.

Crikey, I said to them, things must be getting serious, cabinet ministers are going out in pairs.

Theresa May won a confidence vote easily, but was gone within six months.

What we will get tonight, at precisely 2100 BST is an indisputable number: the number of Tory MPs who want the prime minister out.

It's a number that will hang around Boris Johnson's neck for the rest of his time in office.

And so the game of expectation management is under way: Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit Opportunities Minister, insisted to me that a win by just a single vote, 180 MPs in favour of him carrying on, 179 against, would be a win and enough for him to continue.

So too did Mr Lewis and Mrs Braverman.

Quite a change of tune from when Mr Rees-Mogg was trying to oust Theresa May, and reckoned her victory in a confidence vote where around a third of her colleagues failed to back her was a "terrible result".

I'm already hearing chatter about the rebels getting their numbers into three figures, but let's see.

The prime minister will address Conservative MPs later and will argue other, bigger numbers matter far more: the nearly 14 million people who voted Conservative at the last election.

The whopping majority he won.

His supporters will also say a full blown leadership election - what will happen if 180 Conservative MPs vote against Mr Johnson tonight - would be "divisive, distracting and destructive".

"There's no plan, no strategy, no consensus on who to replace him with," a senior member of his team argues.

And remember too a key thing on noisy days like this at Westminster: don't just listen to the noisy people.

There are lots of noisy people: those passionate about getting rid of Boris Johnson, those passionate about him staying.

But there are many Conservative MPs keeping their heads down.

A quiet vote counts for just as much as a noisy one.

But make no mistake: confidence votes are almost always bad news for political leaders.

And this one is no different.