Our end of year survey asked several one-off questions and has already heaped glory on leading Brexiteers: Michael Gove was our political campaigner of the year, Sir James Dyson our business campaigner, and Daniel Hannan was voted the Conservative politician who did most to achieve Brexit.
But we also asked our standard cabinet question, and there’s a surprise laurel still to issue…
- We said he was soaring last time, but now for the first time ever David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, has topped our table. His enviable score of almost 90 per cent is practically Davidson-esque, and his performance has knocked the Scottish Conservative leader into third place. Davis has the tricky task of defending the Government’s Brexit position before it’s made public, but he seems to have so far got the balance between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Brexit signals right.
- Theresa May is in second with a very high positive score essentially unmoved from the last time of asking. Judging by these numbers it seems that, despite some sceptical press, her honeymoon in office, at least with the membership will extend into 2017.
- Philip Hammond has fallen back almost nine points since last month. It’s not nearly enough to offset his 34-point rise in our last survey, but it suggests that the Chancellor’s standing retains some of the yo-yo quality we wrote about last time.
- Broadly speaking this table suggests that the overall rise in ratings we observed during the last survey have been sustained, and the Government enters the New Year enjoying the goodwill of party members.