Very cool, if true

I think what you are missing here is that the fundamental nature of the Tory Party is a club for the exercising of power by the Tory Party.

Individual Tories will scheme and machinate, plot and backstab to get power for themselves up to, but almost never beyond, the point where they risk damaging the Party's electoral performance or worse, splitting the Party.

What I think is perhaps going on here is that several individual Tories have told their own Prime Minister that they are willing and able to risk the ruination of the Tory Party if they don't get their own way. That may not have happened since the Corn Laws.