Why the vote of no confidence result will actually hasten the Conservative government's demise

Theresa May survived a vote of no confidence yesterday by Conservative MPs-but the margin, 200-117, still puts the Conservatives in big trouble in the long term. 36.9% of MPs voted against Theresa May, including the majority of Conservative backbenchers.

Why did it fail in spite of the chaos over the Brexit deal?

Theresa May is one of the worst Prime Ministers in British history, make no mistake. But unlike with John Redwood's challenge to John Major, which actually failed by a larger margin (89 votes to John Major's 218), a contest between Eurosceptics and pro-Europeans within the Conservative Party, there were and are no credible challengers to Theresa May despite pollsters claiming there are and despite Mrs May being widely perceived as incompetent. The alternatives frequently cited have no notably different or useful vision (e.g. Sajid Javid), are too divisive despite name recognition (e.g. Boris Johnson), are more extreme than Theresa May in terms of a Brexit outlook and would prefer a disastrous no-deal Brexit on principle (e.g. Jacob Rees-Mogg), or have no real credibility (e.g. Geoffrey Cox, cited as a possible outsider challenger were Mrs May to lose the VONC). Also, many Conservative MPs just did not want any more internal and external uncertainty than that already caused by Brexit and Brexit-related issues.

Could not a pro-European and pro-Remain Conservative MP have simply issued a leadership challenge to Theresa May over the bad Brexit deal?

Unlike in the 1990s there simply are not enough pro-Remain and definite pro-EU Conservative MPs to make any such challenge in practice. Such a hypothetical challenge by Anna Soubry, for example, would fail badly. Most pro-European moderates in the UK, who would be Conservatives in earlier times, are now in fact Liberal Democrats or supporters thereof.
 Why will this result in fact hasten this government's downfall?

The result means that Theresa May cannot face a vote of no confidence for at least another year (this is different from a vote of no confidence in the government itself, by the way!). However at the same time the margin of the result means that the Brexit deal as it currently stands has no chance of passing through Parliament, as neither hardline Brexiteers nor pro-European Conservative MPs will support it, and no opposition MPs will support the deal either. This will in turn lead to just more internal and external chaos, which will likely lead to an early general election in 2019 that the Conservatives even on current polling will clearly lose.

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