I might be a Tory spy” – he became research assistant on £14,000 a year to Malcolm Bruce, then the party’s Treasury spokesman. He became MP for Yeovil in 2001 and was soon on the frontbench, eventually becoming the party’s children, schools and families spokesman in 2007.

He was regarded as on the party’s right and he co-edited the Orange Book, a manifesto for the Lib Dems’ drier wing. “I believe that classic liberalism can be a vehicle for delivering opportunities and people getting more out of the state, rather than being delivered monopolistic public services.” If you think that sounds like post-Thatcher Toryism, so did George Osborne. He tried to recruit Laws to the Tories in 2006, but was told the party was too illiberal on social issues.

LawsTheresa May survived the no-confidence vote on Wednesday but she hardly emerged from it unscathed.

That was the consensus of newspapers at home and abroad on Thursday after the beleaguered Prime Minister won the poll by 200 to 117.

The result meant that more than a third of her MPs and well over half of her backbenchers said they wanted her gone.

While some front pages labelled her a "lame duck", over in Belgium they called it a "pyrrhic victory".

Here's how we and other newspapers reported it.

The Daily Telegraph