Rishi Sunak has been ridiculed after it emerged he is now as unpopular as Boris Johnson was during his final months in office.
A YouGov poll published on Wednesday showed the prime minister now has has his lowest ever net favourability score of minus 49, a ten-point drop from late November.
Immediately after Johnson’s resignation, YouGov recorded a score of -46, sinking to his lowest point of -53 a month later.
One year after becoming prime minister, Sunak has now seen his popularity fall to the same level as the Conservatives overall, dashing Tory hopes that he could personally drag the party upwards in the ratings.
At prime minister’s questions today, Labour MP Chris Bryant asked Sunak: “What’s worse, losing your WhatsApp messages as tech bro, losing £11.8bn to fraud as chancellor, presiding over the biggest fall in living standards in history, or desperately clinging on to power when you’ve become even more unpopular than Boris Johnson?”
The prime minister replied: “What matters to me is delivering for the British people and that’s exactly what we are doing.”
Sunak told the Covid inquiry on Monday he did not have any of his WhatsApp messages from the pandemic as he had frequently changed phones and not backed them up.
Research from the House of Commons in 2022 showed billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was lost to fraud and error in the government’s support for businesses during Covid.
Following the government’s Autumn Statement last month, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said living standards are on course to fall to the lowest level since records began in the 1950s.