By Peter Hoskin
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Below
is the Cabinet league table derived from our latest survey of Conservative
party members. It’s rather traditional for IDS, Michael Gove and William Hague
to be at the top – and for Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Ed Davey to be at the
bottom – so I’ll highlight three other things that stand out to my eyes:
- Theresa May has become markedly more popular since the survey we
conducted at
the end of last year. The intervening period, of course, featured her
speech to the ConHome Victory 2015 conference, as well as some strong words
on the ECHR and resistance to further spending cuts for her department. Another
member of the “National
Union of Ministers” – namely, Philip Hammond – has also performed well.
- Grant Shapps scores a meagre +12. The Tory chairmanship is still
an uneasy role.
- George Osborne has recovered some of the popularity he lost
last year, perhaps as a result of a Budget that was considerably more
stable than its predecessor. But he’s still outranked by Danny Alexander.
Indeed, in the background figures, more Tory members (62.8%) are satisfied with
the Chief Secretary to the Treasury than with the Chancellor (58.6).
Anyway,
here’s the full table:
Just under
2,000 people responded to the survey, of whom over 900 were Conservative Party
members. The figures above are taken from the latter's views.