A former party whip at Westminster said he had never seen anything like the chaos before the vote that finally cracked the government. Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael, who was first elected in 2001, was tasked with ensuring colleagues voted with the Conservatives when he was Lib Dem chief whip and deputy chief whip for Tory PM David Cameron’s coalition government.

He still speaks regularly to Tory MPs and said their mood was despondent after a tumultuous week that culminated in the resignation of Prime Minister Liz Truss the morning after the Tories plunged into chaos before a vote on a Labour motion on fracking. Labour MP Chris Bryant claimed some were manhandled through the voting lobby by senior Tories.

Carmichael, who witnessed the commotion, said: “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Politics is important and the decisions you make as an MP matter. If people get hot under the collar about it, that’s not always a bad thing. But that is country miles from what we were seeing last week.

“The mood in the Conservative Party is despondent. It is rudderless. It is a failure of political leadership that has brought us to this point. Not just from Liz Truss. This government and Boris Johnson’s government before it is populated by people who have a colossal sense of entitlement.

“It was their arrogance and hubris that made them think they could bend the markets to their will. As a consequence they may have done permanent and irreparable damage to the British economy.”

In last week’s chaotic Commons vote on fracking, more than 30 Tory MPs refused to back the Government’s decision to lift the ban on shale gas exploration.

However, among the ministers supporting the Government was new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who clearly approves of fracking . . . unless, it seems, it’s in his South-West Surrey constituency.

‘I protest in the strongest of terms against your decision to grant the appeal that will allow drilling and exploration of fossil fuel,’ wrote Hunt. ‘The proposals to carry out such activity have been decisively rejected by Surrey County Council and the entire local community. I can’t see how this site has any role to play in our future energy supply needs.’

‘Nimby Hunt’ was widely mocked on social media following last week’s vote, including the following on a local blog: ‘FRACK!! I am now the Chancellor so sod the Stop The UKOG brigade protesting against oil/gas exploration on my patch.’

Madsen Pirie, president of the Thatcherite Adam Smith Institute, is not impressed by the bleatings of some of former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s more stentorian critics. ‘We have indeed entered strange territory when a notionally Conservative MP, Robert Halfon, describes those who favour tax cuts as “libertarian jihadists”. They used to be called Conservatives.’ Let’s face it, he has a point!

Overheard in the Commons. One Tory MP to another: ‘How long before the Queen’s record of 15 prime ministers is beaten by Charles III?’ 

On the motion: Should time be made for MPs to debate a fracking ban?

MPs have voted 230 for yes, 326 for no.

The government wins the vote.

Comments from MPs

Labour MP Chris Bryant said cabinet ministers Thérèse Coffey and Jacob Rees-Mogg were among a group of senior Tories who were putting pressure on Conservative MPs to vote against the Labour motion on fracking.

Rees-Mogg has denied this, telling Sky News there was “no action that I saw” in regards to any wrongful behaviour.

Asked if what he saw was bullying, he said: “From what I saw, no.”

Labour MP Chris Bryant said Alexander Stafford, the Conservative MP for Rother Valley was “manhandled” and “bullied” in the voting lobby.

Bryant told Sky News: “There was a bunch of Conservative members who were completely uncertain about whether they were allowed to vote with the Labour motion because of what had been said in the chamber about whether it’s a free vote or a confidence vote.

“There was a group – including several cabinet ministers – who were basically shouting at them. At least one member was physically pulled through the door into the voting lobby.”

Commons veteran Chris Bryant says he saw members being “physically manhandled” and bullied into a voting lobby and calls for an investigation into what happened. Says this goes against behaviour code of MPs

Ian Murray MP said I’ve never seen scenes like it at the entrance to a voting lobby. Tories on open warfare. Jostling and Rees Mogg shouting at his colleagues. Whips screaming at Tories. They are done and should call a general election. Two Tory whips dragging people in. Shocking.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP said  Just seen Tory whips manhandling a crying Tory MP into their lobby for fracking. You couldn’t make this toxic stuff up, nasty to see the Tories at work, if this is how they treat their MPs spare a thought for the country.

Massive Tory row going on in the lobby, literally trying to force people through. Lots of anger. Jess Phillips MP

A Conservative MP said the government frontbench should “hang their heads in shame” as she said the leadership had “severely tested” Tory MPs’ trust.

Ruth Edwards, the Conservative MP for Rushcliffe, did not say she would vote against the government, saying: “I don’t support fracking, but I am even less keen on the idea of letting the Labour party play at being in government for the day.” She told MPs: “My final observation tonight is for our own frontbench. For they have enabled the opposition to force colleagues to choose between voting against our manifesto and voting to lose the whip.

“They should take a look at the faces of colleagues behind them, colleagues who have fracking sites in their constituencies, and they should hang their heads in shame.

“A Conservative government will always have my confidence, but its leadership today has severely tested my trust and the trust of many colleagues and I would advise them not to do so again.”

The backbencher Sir Charles Walker told BBC News the following:

As a Tory MP for 17 years, who’s never been a minister, who’s got on with it loyally most of the time, I think it’s a shambles and a disgrace. I think it is utterly appalling.

I’m livid and, you know, I really shouldn’t say this but I hope all those people that put Liz Truss in No. 10 – I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it for the ministerial red box. I hope it was worth it to sit around the cabinet table, because the damage they have done to our party is extraordinary.

I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of talentless people putting their tick in the right box, not because it’s in the national interest, but because it’s in their own personal interest to achieve a ministerial position.

A Conservative-led council in Lancashire, which represents the area with the only two shale gas wells in Britain, has voted unanimously for the government to stick to its 2019 fracking ban commitments and clarify how local consent will be gained.

The moratorium on fracking was put in place in November 2019 by Boris Johnson’s government after multiple earth tremors were experienced in Lancashire near the active fracking site in Preston New Road. The greatest tremor at the site, which triggered the ban, had a recorded magnitude of 2.9 on the Richter scale.

In its 2019 election manifesto, the Conservative Party said it would not support fracking “unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely”. However, the moratorium on shale gas production, or hydraulic fracturing, was formally lifted on 22 September this year, after being mooted by Truss in her first speech to the commons as prime minister.

According to the Guardian, the leader of Fylde Council, Karen Buckley, introduced an amended motion on Wednesday night that called on the government to “set out how local consent will be ascertained” in the case of fracking and to “demonstrate the manifesto commitment of 2019”. All 40 councillors who attended the meeting voted for the motion.

Speaking at the debate before the motion was tabled, councillor Paul Hayhurst dismissed an idea that the government could try to buy residents’ support with one-off payments, according to the Guardian, and claimed proximity to a fracking site “blights” house prices.

He said that giving locals a lump sum of £1,000 to have fracking in their area, as has been proposed, “would really be like turkeys voting for Christmas” and said that “it will cost you £50,000 when you try to sell your houses”, the newspaper wrote.

Another councillor, Matthew Lee, was reported to have said that he conducted an online survey last week to canvas residents’ views and got “many hundreds of responses which found that 85% of locals are against fracking”.

Reader in geochemistry at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Stuart Gilfillan, and petroleum geologist Professor Richard Davies, told ENDS that the science on fracking has not changed since 2019. Both referenced the British Geological Survey’s (BGS) peer-reviewed report which concluded that predicting both the occurrence and size of large earthquakes remains a “scientific challenge”.

‘Let Lancashire decide on fracking’: politicians demand to keep local control over future drilling proposals

Lancashire County Council has called on the government to pledge that local politicians will be allowed to make the final decision on any future proposals for fracking in the area.

Conservative MPs are said to be discussing with Labour ways to block Liz Truss’s move to allow fracking at sites across England.

The prime minister is determined to press ahead with plans to boost drilling for shale gas, despite opposition from environmentalists, opposition parties and some Tory MPs.

Several Tories told the BBC they had talked with the opposition about which parliamentary mechanisms could be used to force ministers into yet another U-turn.

A Labour source confirmed they had discussed ways to force a vote in the Commons with backbench Tories opposing fracking.

Business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg – who announced the lifting of a ban on fracking last month – said MPs always “have a say”. The cabinet minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “MPs always have a say on what goes on. There are any number of mechanisms that MPs can use to have a say on things.”

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