A fortnight is a long time in politics, so this month’s Shadow Cabinet League Table kicks off with a small health warning: Andrew RT Davies is no longer leader of the Conservatives in the Senedd.
Whilst we don’t have a subgroup for Welsh members, it’s worth noting that his final score from our panel was a relatively healthy +31, enough to place him in the middle of the table were he in the Shadow Cabinet. His successor, Darren Millar MS, has been installed without a vote by the Welsh membership, so it will be interesting to see where his score comes in next month.
The top of the table is otherwise unchanged, with Kemi Badenoch, Mel Stride, and Robert Jenrick all posting scores within the margin of error from last month (although it has seen the Shadow Chancellor and Shadow Justice Secretary swap places on the podium).
Given the dramatically pessimistic shift in the panel’s expectations for the next election since the previous survey, that stasis is interesting – although the air has gone out a little from the overall scores as one scans down the table.
If this means that members are tempering their expectations of what the leadership can achieve, that’s good news for Badenoch. As we noted in November, the most dangerous conditions for her would be high membership expectations – perhaps fuelled by mounting difficulties for the Government over the next year or so – which were not matched by commensurate Conservative advances.
Perhaps the fact that seven in ten members think Reform UK poses the most serious challenge to our Party at the next election also explains why they may, for now, be prepared to cut the leadership some slack over how quickly the Tories can capitalise on Labour’s growing catalogue of self-inflicted wounds.