“A Conservative Prime Minister tops our Cabinet League Table for the first time”. That was the headline above this site’s first Cabinet League Table of the Theresa May era. We greeted the first of the Johnson era with “Javid pips Johnson and Rees-Mogg to the top of the podium” (the former premier came second).
Liz Truss’s first outing as Prime Minister finds her almost exactly mid-table on plus 36 points, compared to May’s plus 93 and Johnson’s plus 77 – so scarcely a triumph but not a disaster either. Last month as Foreign Secretary, she was third on plus 49.
Kwasi Kwarteng was tenth from top on plus 37. Now he is Chancellor, and eleventh from bottom on plus 28.
Scores were relatively low in the last table of the Johnson premiership, and remain so in the first of Truss’s time at the top. James Cleverly is up by 30 points or so, and is second. Kemi Badenoch is straight in at third, and Suella Braverman, Therese Coffey, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Penny Mordaunt all come in at over plus 50.
There’s a tentative air about this table, as the panel feels its way with the new regime. The survey went out in the wake of the Bank of Engand’s pension bailout but before the Prime Minister’s ordeal by local radio interview.