After the vote the Torys had last night an interesting titbit came up that hasn't been picked up anywhere, which I thought quite relevant.
Teresa May got 200 votes, verses 117 in her confidence vote. However, regardless of whether this is damaging or not, it is still more votes than she got in her leadership contest.
Some might say her popularity within the Tory party has increased.
As JRM pointed out though around a good proportion of those voting for her this time have government roles based on appointment by her. This adds a little self-interest to their decision making. It still remains that the wider Conservative party wasn't consulted in the election of May. It was a fairly undemocratic fait accompli by the parliamentary party who persuaded Leadsom to withdraw. Given the way the rules were written this left May as the only one of the final two still in the contest and she became PM.
The feeling was that Leadsom would have won the wider vote.
The point is that the Tories chose their leader by democratic means in 2016 and have had another democratic process to confirm their leader in 2018. Something supported by JRM. In both cases the outcome was much wider than the Brexit ref. Stating that a second Brexit ref would be undemocratic appears to be the height of hypocrisy, not that I expect anything else.
I think a second vote should be held. Stay/Leave and for leave May Deal/No Deal. These would be two separate questions. Answers all possible options and leaves Parliament no move to manoeuvre. At present they can cling to "people didn't know what they were voting for", which may be true in some cases but they've wasted the time since not finding out exactly what people wanted. Instead they've continued to play their Westminster Village games rather than what they should have been doing. A classic part of this was wasting time on an election which hamstrung May in her negotiations.