We will see whether that number grows or falls if the dispute is still unresolved at the end of January – the month in which pressures on the NHS are often at their most intense.
It’s a tribute of a kind to the topsy-turvy nature of 2022 that Johnson, Truss and Sunak were all eligible to be both Minister of the Year and Backbencher of the Year.
He’s recently been in the news for laying into Gary Neville, which will have done his cause no harm at all.
The broad consensus needed for constitutional change is at odds with the factional spirit in which they have launched their campaign.
The ousting of Boris Johnson, the summer’s leadership election, the Truss premiership, the ousting of Truss, the second briefer leadership election, the various financial events – none of it has made any discernable difference to this tale of ratings decline.
Perhaps the best way of reading this finding is the most simple – as a cry of pain from Tory activists as prices rise, the economy slows, and the tax burden moves towards its highest level since World War Two.
32 per cent, roughly one in three panel members, supported such an exchange and 60 per cent, some three in five of the whole, opposed it.
In our last survey of the summer’s leadership election, 60 per cent said they would vote for Truss, and only 28 per cent Sunak. So a lot of those saying she was right to resign voted for her only two months before.
The Prime Minister will be pleased to see has the tentative approval of party members.
And that energy bill support scheme, so disliked by some prominent Truss backers? Ninety per cent of the panel back it.
Wallace is top again – with Cleverly, Badenoch, Braverman, Rees-Mogg and Mordaunt above 50 points. There’s a tentative air about this table, as the panel feels its way with the new regime.
This month’s ratings bear the mark of a leadership election that many Tory activists clearly found unsatisfactory.
These results are in effect identical to a YouGov poll published earlier today. If both we and they are right, Sunak needs a massive game-changer to turn this contest round – and he’s running out of time.