Last month’s Cabinet League table found a record total of six Ministers in negative ratings. This month’s plumbs a new low – with a Nazgûl-like total of nine in the red.
Oliver Dowden, Greg Hands and Rishi Sunak himself join Michael Gove, Andrew Mitchell, Grant Shapps, Jeremy Hunt, Robert Jenrick and Therese Coffey.
The only consolation I can offer for all these, and for the miserable totals of most of those in positive ratings, is that Boris Johnson and Theresa May did even worse in their time.
The former’s score fell as low as -33.8 and the latter’s to -51.2. By comparison, the Prime Minister’s score of -2.7, equal to a previous low, is the sunlit uplands.
Make of it all what you will, but my take is that the panel’s dominant emotion is less anger than a deep sense of frustration and foreboding. (Many of its members will also be feeling the economic pinch.)
Anger has tended to focus itself on a few people, at least as far as the panel concerned. By contrast, exasperation seeps out to engulf almost the entire Cabinet.
Hence the low scores throughout – with only James Cleverly and the inevitable Ben Wallace, top again, scoring more than 50 points.
You can cite particular reasons. Boris Johnson for Dowden, Net Zero for Shapps, overseas aid for Mitchell, housing and borders for Jenrick, the London candidacy debacle for Hands, sewage for Coffey, the economy for Hunt.
All these are fair or unfair according to view, but I sense that there is a pervasive worry about drift. The disillusion of members doesn’t seem to me to be primarily about the five pledges and whether they will or won’t be realised.
Rather, I suspect it’s driven by the absence of a story about what Sunak believes the main challenges for Britain are and how he intends to overcome them – the context in which the pledges are set.
The prime ministers who make a lasting impact, like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, had a mission that friend and foe alike understand, even if they don’t like it.
This autumn’s Conservative conference presents Sunak with may well be his last chance to tell his story – and set out how he wants to change Britain for the better before the next election and after it.