Liz Truss cements her position as the darling of the Tory rank and file according to the reliable ConservativeHome readers’ poll. Elevated to the Foreign Office and now sporting a power-bob hair do, described by sketch writer Quentin Letts as Hilary Clinton meets Michael Fabricant, she has a sky high 82.8 positive approval rating. The turn round in her fortunes from last year when she was being tipped to be sacked from the Cabinet is quite something. Liz is one of the increasingly rare consistently free market voices around the Cabinet table…

The table is calculated on the basis of the net approval ratings of the ConservativeHome readership, it is a good guide to who is on the up and who is sliding down the greasy pole. Some 15 points behind Liz, Ben Wallace is up marginally, jostling with David Frost and Jacob Rees Mogg in fourth place in the mid-sixties. Rishi Sunak is down by some 10 points and moves from second to fifth place. Rishi’s tax hikes have clearly taken the gloss off him with the true blue believers. 

Grant Shapps and Priti Patel are bumping along the bottom in barely positive approval territory. Shapps has been doing fairly well with the incredibly difficult transport brief. Patel is suffering because she has failed to do the seemingly impossible – stop the cross channel migrants. Tory activists are unforgiving, they don’t want excuses, they want results.