An important caveat to kick off this month’s Cabinet League Table: our survey was conducted before the local elections, which have rather dominated the news cycle for the past week or so.
Of course, there’s no reason for those results to necessarily impact the individual scores of any particular ministers. But they might have affected the broader metrics by which the survey takes the temperature amongst party members; for example, we have one fewer minister in negative ratings than we did last month. They remain the only figures with scores north of 30 points.
The overall picture, however, remains broadly the same. Kemi Badenoch, Johnny Mercer, and Penny Mordaunt continue to hog the podium, each with very similar scores to the last table. Jeremy Hunt and Michael Tomlinson remain at the bottom, although the third spot on the anti-podium is taken by Michael Gove.
One big improvement is Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who has put on 15 points and, were he in the Cabinet, would now rank fourth. The obvious explanation is the downfall of Humza Yousaf and the SNP’s recent travails, about the Tories’ role in which he wrote for us last week.