Our latest Cabinet league table is shown above. Some points:
- Osborne remains at the top… Something that hasn’t happened for a while: a bit of consistency at the top. Since the Chancellor rose to the summit of the Cabinet league table for the very first time, back in April, we’ve also seen IDS and May occupy that position, until Osborne took it back last month. Although his approval rating is pretty much the same as what he scored last month, it should really be seen in a wider context. Just over a year ago, Osborne was one of the lowest-ranked Conservative ministers, with a rating of just 17.
- …but Boris scores higher than him. And another thing that hasn’t happened for a while: Boris has the highest score of all, higher than any Cabinet minister’s. It’s a close-run thing, however. He’s on 83.3, whilst Osborne is on 83.0. After Boris’s big announcement today, could this be a preview of contests to come?
- Javid stabilises. We’ve been keeping an eye on Sajid Javid since he first entered the Cabinet league table, in a particularly buoyant position, back in May. In which case, it ought to be recorded that his progress has been checked this month. He’s gone from fifth to seventh, although not as a result of his rating dropping. He’s simply been overtaken by Jeremy Hunt and Philip Hammond.
- The new entrants. This is the first league table since the recent reshuffle, so we shouldn’t be too quick to judge the new entrants. That said, Esther McVey’s rating of 43.5 is pretty impressive, even if she had been doing a large part of her current job previously. And Liz Truss’s 24.7 is surprisingly low, which could be more a backlash against Owen Paterson’s sacking than anything else.
- An unfond farewell? This survey was conducted before Baroness Warsi’s departure from the Cabinet, so we’ve kept her score in. As it happens, she was party members’ least popular Tory attending Cabinet. In fact, she’s the only Tory with a negative rating overall.
> Over 900 Party members responded to the survey. The results are tested against a control panel which was supplied by YouGov.