BRITISH Prime Minister Theresa May has secured enough votes to stay on as Conservative party leader after fighting off an attempt to oust her through a confidence vote.

Conservative MPs voted by 200 to 117 in the secret ballot in Westminster, Conservative 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady announced.

Failure in the ballot would have triggered a leadership contest in which Mrs May could not stand.

But because she has won, another challenge cannot be mounted against her position as Conservative leader for a year.

It is a boost for the embattled politician as she attempts to push a hugely-controversial Brexit withdrawal agreement through the House of Commons.

Mrs May told Conservative MPs she will not lead the party into the next general election, but said she wants to stay on to deliver her Brexit deal.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker insisted tonight that the withdrawal agreement “cannot be reopened or contradicted”.

The pair spoke by telephone on Wednesday evening and a Government spokesman said “both agreed that the withdrawal agreement is a balanced compromise and the best outcome available”.

“While they agreed to work to provide reassurance to the UK, the agreement cannot be reopened or contradicted,” the spokesman said.

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Earlier, Mrs May received an enthusiastic welcome as she addressed Conservative MPs at the backbench 1922 Committee moments before the crucial vote began at 6pm, with backers banging their desks to show their support.

Afterwards, solicitor general Robert Buckland told reporters: “She said ‘In my heart I would like to lead the party into the next election’ and then that was the introductory phrase to her indication that she would accept the fact that that would not happen, that is not her intention.”

And British Cabinet minister Amber Rudd said: “She was very clear that she won’t be taking the general election in 2022.”

Other MPs indicated that Mrs May had promised to find a “legally binding solution” to ensuring that the UK does not get permanently trapped in a backstop arrangement to keep the Irish border open after Brexit.

Anger over the backstop among Conservative backbenchers and their Democratic Unionist Party allies was the main obstacle to Mrs May getting her Brexit deal through the House of Commons earlier this week.

Her decision to defer the vote sparked a new wave of letters of no confidence which pushed the total beyond the threshold of 48 needed to trigger a ballot.

DUP leader Arlene Foster, who met Mrs May shortly before the vote, insisted that “tinkering around the edges” of the Prime Minister’s EU Withdrawal Agreement would not be enough to win her party’s support for the deal.

Mrs Foster, whose 10 MPs prop up the minority Conservative administration, said she told the PM that “we were not seeking assurances or promises, we wanted fundamental legal text changes”.

Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said he was not persuaded by the Prime Minister’s assurances to vote for her in the ballot.

He told the Press Association: “It was all the same old stuff. Nothing has changed.”

Mrs May was informed that she would face a ballot by the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, in a phone call at 10.35pm on Tuesday.

She had just returned to 10 Downing Street from a day of travels which had taken her to The Hague, Berlin and Brussels for Brexit talks with EU leaders.

As day broke in Westminster on Wednesday, Sir Graham issued a press release announcing that the threshold had been reached and a confidence vote would be held later that day.

In a dramatic early morning statement outside the door to 10 Downing Street, Mrs May responded: “I will contest that vote with everything I’ve got.”

Warning that a change of prime minister would put the UK’s future at risk and could delay or halt Brexit, she insisted she would stay on to “finish the job”.

Mrs May said securing a Brexit deal which will deliver on the result of the 2016 referendum was “now within our grasp” and said she was “making progress” in securing reassurances from EU leaders on MPs’ concerns about the proposed backstop for the Irish border.

By early afternoon, the number of Conservative MPs saying publicly that they would vote for her had passed the 159 required for her to survive the attempt to oust her.

Downing Street aides had declined to discuss whether the PM would stay on if she won by only a slender margin.

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