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

The Tories remain bitterly divided and will not learn the lessons of this hopeless leadership challenge

So, Steve Baker, Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rest of you, was that really worth it? After the day of folly it doesn’t look that way. In the end, the interminably long-discussed Conservative leadership challenge to Theresa May has come to nothing. When it came to it – even in a secret ballot where MPs could set their public protestations of loyalty to one side – it proved to be more mouth than trousers, a scary firework banger, but a one-day wonder, a brief distraction from the serious business of Brexit. Tomorrow, grownup politics, damned difficult politics, resumes after today’s hiatus.

The result showed what we knew already. The Tories are a very divided party, of whom a clear majority supports May as leader even in a bad Brexit crisis. The critics went for the kill, but May’s 200-117 victory is a decisive one. It’s a better result for May than when she won the leadership against Andrea Leadsom and Michael Gove in 2016 (she got 199 back then; against their 130). To coin a phrase, nothing has changed.

Related: Theresa May survives. Things are so bad we have to be grateful for that | Polly Toynbee

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