JACOB REES-Mogg has said Boris Johnson can stay in office if he wins by a single vote tonight despite previously demanding Theresa May quit after she won by 83.

The Brexit opportunities minister said a winning margin one in the confidence vote by Tory MPs would be “enough” for the Prime Minister to have a mandate to stay in Number 10.

However in December 2019, after Mrs May won a confidence vote by 200 to 117, Mr Rees-Mogg said it was a “terrible result” for her and she should quit.

A vocal Brexiteer critic of Mrs May, he said at the time: “It's a terrible result for the Prime Minister, it really is.

"Of course I accept this result. But the Prime Minister must realise that under all constitutional norms, she ought to go and see the Queen urgently and resign.”

Today, Mr Rees-Mogg suggested a very different sort of arithmetic applied to Mr Johnson.

He said: “One is enough. That’s the rule in a democracy – if you win by one you win.”

Pressed on the matter during a Sky News interview, he said: “One is enough, it’s no good saying that the rules of the party say something and then behind it unofficially, there is some other rule that nobody knows and is invented for the purpose.

“I obviously want the Prime Minister to get as big a majority as possible, I think that would be helpful and it would close this matter down between now and the next general election, which would be good for the country, good for the Conservative Party, but one is enough.”

Asked to be clear if he meant Mr Johnson would have a “clear mandate” to rule if he won by such a small majority, Mr Rees-Mogg said: “To be absolutely clear, the answer is yes.”

He said the Conservative Party wrote the rules for a “straight up and down vote”.

Mr Rees-Mogg also claimed that people booing the PM outside St Paul’s Cathedral during the Jubilee weekend was a “mere bagatelle” and “perfectly normal”.

Pressed by host Kay Burley over the PM being jeered during such a significant national event, he said: “I think you over-interpret what happened. Political figures must expect this.

“Politicians who do things, politicians who achieve things, politicians who lead the country well, obviously stir up strong emotions in certain sections of the population. 

“That is what you would expect and I think that the sort of piety that they were on the steps of St Paul’s is not really reflective of modern British society.”

After being played a clip of the incident, he accused Sky News of turning up the volume.

He said: “Turning the volume up to get your readers to be too concerned about that – that was a bit miserable really.”

MP Peter Bone, another of Mrs May’s Brexiteer critics and supporter of Mr Johnson, also said in 2019 that winning a confidence vote in itself was not enough to stay on.

He said at the time: “She said in 2017 she would lead the Conservative Party if she had the support of the parliamentary party. Clearly when you've got more than a third voting against you don't. So if she honours her word she will decide in the interests of the party and the nation she will go."

He added: "How can she govern when she doesn't have a third of the party supporting her?"

After winning her confidence vote, Mrs May struggled to regain authority and quit six months later when the Tories came a humiliating fifth in the 2019 Euro elections.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis also said winning the vote “is victory” even if by a single vote.

“We live in a democracy and it’s absolutely right that a democratic decision is what we respect,” he said.

Attorney General Suella Braverman said “technically, yes” a single vote win would be enough for Mr Johnson to continue but “I’m sure that he will win with a larger margin than that”.