'It's been Brexit all over again' How internal Tory battles played out in frantic 48 hours

Late yesterday afternoon, a couple of dozen Conservative right wingers hustled into the Wilson Room in Portcullis House, parliament's modern extension.

- Kiran Stacey

There were two goals for the meeting. Ostensibly, it was to agree how they would vote in last night's crunch vote on the Rwanda bill - a moment they knew had the power to define Rishi Sunak's premiership.

But there was also a second reason for meeting so close to the vote itself: to make sure that after a frantic 36 hours of lobbying by the prime minister and his officials, the members of the loose affiliation of Tory MPs would not falter at the last and vote in favour of the bill.

Members emerged minutes before the voting began, with representatives from five major backbench groups - dubbed the five families, after the New York mafia - announcing they would not support the bill.

The meeting, and the subsequent dramatic walk down to the chamber of the House of Commons to vote, capped an extraordinary two days in Westminster which saw internal Tory battles play out publicly in a way not seen since the Brexit wars of 2017-19. In the end, enough Tory MPs abstained to give Rishi Sunak a bloody nose without defeating the bill.