Chris Mason: No easy way forward for Rishi Sunak after Commons win as Rwanda bill splits party

The prime minister will allow himself a smile this morning.

Not because a government winning a vote at this early stage of trying to pass a new law is much of an achievement.

But because victory is the absence of defeat - and these pages and others would have looked rather different had he lost.

The Rwanda plan would have been finished and there would have been massive questions everywhere about Rishi Sunak's authority and future.

Instead, the Rwanda policy remains a goer, for now.

And while Rishi Sunak's position in the opinion polls is bleak, his position within the Conservative Party isn't as bad as it could have been.

And you might perfectly reasonably be asking, my goodness there was a heck of a lot of noise and kerfuffle at Westminster from reporters and others suggesting a moment of huge jeopardy, and yet the government won comfortably.

But the jeopardy was real.

A government hasn't lost a vote at this early stage of the legislative process, known as Second Reading, for decades.

But it was a real possibility this time.

A climate minister isn't flown back from a climate summit in Dubai to vote unless a government is fretting about losing.

And there were plenty more examples like that.

This was the biggest, most perilous whipping operation - persuasion job - of Rishi Sunak's time in Downing Street.

And, from the government's perspective, it worked.

A text pings in on my phone from a Conservative MP:

"He lives to fight another day. But a spring election looks more likely as the party is multi-factional now - not just factional."

Who knows about the election, everyone is guessing.

But that observation about the "multi-factional" Conservative Party is an interesting one.

It is what we have seen in the last few days.

The Conservative MP for Mansfield and leader of Nottinghamshire County Council Ben Bradley is more blunt.

He told BBC Newsnight: "We have been in government for 13 years. We have got a parliamentary party that has been built in all different directions, in different elections, by different leaders. You might argue it's kind of ungovernable. This situation suggests it's certainly not easy to govern."

And that is why the awkwardness over the Rwanda policy now elongates, because when this bill returns in the new year some of those who abstained will demand changes, or else.

And some of those who offered their support will demand it doesn't change, or else.

Finding a way between those two views won't be easy.