Kemi Badenoch has a route to power – but it won’t be easy (Image: Getty)
Support for Kemi Badenoch is almost as strong among Reform UK supporters as within the Tory tribe, the latest Savanta polling shows.
Fifty-nine per cent of people who voted Tory in the summer election think she would make a better prime minister than Sir , as do 57 per cent of those who voted Reform.
A key challenge for the Tory leader is winning over people who supported ’s party in July. Just four per cent of Reform backers think Sir Keir would be the finer PM, with the rest undecided.
Among all respondents, 39 per cent think the Labour leader has what it takes to be the best prime minister, with 26 per cent opting for Mrs Badenoch.
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However, Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, saw a silver lining for the Tory leader, suggesting this “isn’t a bad position to start from”. He said that “Starmer trailed by more than 20 points at the start of his own tenure as party leader”.
While 41 per cent of Britons said they disliked both Sir Keir and his policies, just 29 per cent said this of Mrs Badenoch. And 37 per cent disliked both the Labour leader and his party, with one in three saying this of the leader of the opposition.
Mr Hopkins said: “At the start of Starmer’s tenure, just 23 per cent of the public said they disliked both Starmer and his party, 10 points lower than it is for Badenoch now. Reversing your own party’s fortunes from opposition is easier said than done, but will be made harder for Badenoch by her own low personal favourability down at -10.
“Badenoch needs the vast majority of people still to make up their minds about her to end up actively liking her, and history tells us that almost no politician ends up achieving such a feat.”
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Exclusive polling by Ipsos shows one of the biggest challenges facing the Tory frontbench is invisibility.
Nearly half of Britons (46 per cent) could not recall reading or hearing about leading other than Mrs Badenoch “in the past couple of weeks”.
Priti Patel, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, had the highest profile, with 32 per cent saying they had noticed her. She was quickly followed by Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick (31 per cent), with Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride (15 per cent), Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott (12 per cent) and Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins (seven per cent) coming in further behind.
The polling conducted on November 8-11 found only one in 25 people could remember Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho or Shadow Leader of the Commons Jesse Norman coming onto their radar.
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Richard Fuller made an impression on just three per cent of respondents. And a mere one in 50 had noticed the likes of Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge or Science Secretary Alan Mak.
Mrs Badenoch will hope that as the MPs bed into their shadow cabinet roles and take on Sir Keir’s team their profiles will rise.
A former Tory minister acknowledged the difficulty of winning the limelight after a lost election, saying: “It’s never easy because governments get all the attention, particularly in the wake of elections. We’re still in that period where everyone is interested in the Government.
“That’s the price you pay for going into Opposition.”
The highest-profile Labour MP other than the Prime Minister was Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Nearly half of people (48 per cent) had read or heard about her recently.
The next most prominent were Deputy PM (36 per cent), Foreign Secretary David Lammy (35 per cent), Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband (27 per cent), and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Health Secretary Wes Streeting (both 26 per cent).