It’s a new era, and so we usher in our very first Shadow Cabinet League Table. There have been a lot of changes since the last one we published pre-election, although an obvious point of continuity is Douglas Ross – plunging from fourth-placed following the defenestration of Humza Yousaf to the second-lowest score after the Tories’ disappointing result in Scotland.
Nonetheless, the new era opens with some good news for our leadership hopefuls. All four of those that sit in the Shadow Cabinet have relatively respectable positions: Kemi Badenoch in first place, James Cleverly in third, Tom Tugendhat in fifth, and Mel Stride in sixth – although, mirroring our leadership question, the Shadow Housing Secretary commands a decisive lead.
Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, is someone else altogether. It is little surprise that Rishi Sunak should post a negative score after last month’s electoral rout. But Jeremy Hunt, the second pillar of the ancien régime keeping the front benches warm until November, is… in second place?
What?
To be clear, this score makes sense if a strict assessment of the Shadow Chancellor’s performance in his new office. Hunt has been energetic in taking the fight to Rachel Reeves over her spurious claim to have discovered a ~£22bn black hole in the public finances, and there is no doubt that his previous experience at the Treasury has helped.
Shadow ministers are also simply afforded fewer opportunities to distinguish themselves than their luminate counterparts, so we might expect stories like this to have a larger impact on the League Table going forward, with people thrust into the spotlight depending on where the Government presents a vulnerability.
But recall that in May, the then-Chancellor’s score was -22. He was the second-most unpopular member of an historically (by our panel’s reckoning) unpopular government, and the intervening election campaign did not exactly cover the senior members of that government in glory.
Now we’re obviously grading on a curve, as the overall ratings for the Shadow Cabinet are truly anaemic; where eight Cabinet members posted scores of 20 or more in May, that is now the number that manage double digits. But even so, Hunt’s 27.3 would have made him the fourth-most popular member of the Cabinet back in the Spring.
We shall see if it endures. If the above explanation is correct, it well might: Reeves seems set to spend the next few months making a bunch of very unpopular decisions, and Hunt will be the first line of attack on the Conservative side. By the autumn, the Shadow Chancellor might be scoring very well indeed.