WITH multi-millionaire Rishi Sunak set to take over the job of prime minister after being handpicked by Tory MPs, just how popular is he with the public?
Sunak lost to Liz Truss in September, with the former chancellor gaining the support of 42.6% (60,399) of the Tory membership while Truss garnered 57.4% (81,326).
And now, just over six weeks later, Truss is on her way out and Sunak is on his way in.
So how did we get here?
Sunak was the frontrunner amongst MPs during the summer leadership race
In the five rounds of voting where MPs whittled down the nine contenders for the next prime minister to take over from Boris Johnson, Sunak came out on top each time.
He had the highest number of initial backers (88) and finished with a higher number than his final competitor Liz Truss. Truss’s win came at the expense of Penny Mordaunt, who was only nine votes short of staying in the competition.
It was unsurprising, therefore, that Sunak easily managed to get the backing of over 100 MPs for him to take over as leader of the Tory party.
Scandal-dogged Sunak’s drop in popularity amongst Tory membership
While Sunak is the top choice amongst MPs, the Tory party members are a different story altogether.
Following numerous damning stories in the press last year - from his own personal finances, having a US green card, his wife Akshata Murty’s non-dom status, and his tax policies - Sunak’s role as the golden boy in the party began to disappear.
You can see in the graph above that as Sunak's popularity plummets, Truss's grows, prior of course to her disastrous mini-budget, the fallout from which forced her to resign.
As Sunak’s resignation as chancellor in July was seen as the trigger for Johnson being forced to stand down, it’s understood many in the membership still hold this against him. Sunak is likely relieved that he managed to evade the online ballot of members thanks to Mordaunt dropping out at the last minute.
A YouGov poll from August, not cited in the above graph, showed that for those Tory members who had an unfavourable opinion of Sunak, the main reason was that he had caused Johnson to resign (46%), second to his tax policies and performance as chancellor (18%).
How was he viewed as Chancellor?
Sunak is a well-known face in the UK, thanks to his time as chancellor and the role he played in the Covid pandemic with the rollout of furlough and the ill-fated Eat Out to Help Out Scheme.
YouGov’s polling shows that Sunak was seen by between 50% and 44% of the public as doing a “good job” until the summer of 2021.
The highest point where Sunak was seen as doing a “bad job” (50%) came in April 2022, the same month it was revealed that he and Johnson had been fined for breaching Covid-19 rules. At the same time, only 20% of respondents thought he was doing a “good job”.
Is he popular with the UK public?
Once upon a time perhaps, but Sunak’s favourability rating in a series of YouGov polls has had him on a downward trajectory since he took office in 2020, with another big dip in his figures again coming in the summer of 2021.
Following this, Sunak was on a continued decline with only a small boost during the beginning stages of the first Tory leadership contest of the year.
However, his latest result in October puts him just one percentage point less than his worst result, just as he is set to become the UK’s next prime minister.
