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Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Isabel Hardman and I'm joined by James Forsyth.

Now we've had a big commons vote today and it's not been on COVID, which is quite unusual. It was a vote on the government's decision to cut international aid spending from a target of 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%. And this was very controversial.

It was something that the government had resisted giving MPs a vote on,

despite it being in the Conservative manifesto.

And last night, the Treasury sprung it on MPs.

They were going to be holding this vote.

And today, the vote passed.

So the government won. They votes to 298 and there were

25 conservative rebels. James, were we expecting that size of a revolt? So I think the government's

majority in this vote was actually slightly larger than most people would have expected this morning.

It's worth remembering that when Andrew Mitchell had previously tried to force a vote on this,

Andrew Mitchell, who's a former Chief Whiff as well as a former Development Secretary,

told the comments that if it had come to a vote, they would have won them, the rebels would have defeated the government, the majority of at least nine. So I think

the size of a government's majority, you know, looks fairly comfortable. You say a government majority

of 35 and you think what's the fuss about. But then, as you say, you've got 24 Tories voting

against the government, 14 of whom are former ministers,

and you've got the former Prime Minister Theresa May being one of them, Jeremy Hunt,

the former Foreign Secretary and Boris Johnson's rival for the Tory leadership being one.

And you see, I think, a problem for the government whips coming down the line, which is that this group of former ministers

is essentially unwhippable. They aren't interested in preferment and they aren't really

...