Rishi Sunak more popular with Tory voters, poll shows

A series of political breakthroughs helped Rishi Sunak to become more popular with Tory voters, according to a new survey.

A survey of Tory members for ConservativeHome has revealed that net satisfaction rating of the prime minister has increased from only 7.4 per cent last month to 43.7 now, the Times reported.

According to respondents, negotiating the Windsor Framework to break the impasse on Northern Ireland, signing the Aukus defence deal with Australia and the US and announcing new measures to tackle the small boats crisis have helped Sunak to improve ratings.

However, he stands fifth in terms of popularity.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace is the most popular cabinet minister with a rating of 85.1,followed by business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch on 63.5.

Foreign secretary James Cleverly with a rating of 63 stands third and home secretary Suella Braverman is fourth on 44.

The survey found out that environment secretary Thérèse Coffey is the least popular minister on minus 2.3, behind development minister Andrew Mitchell on minus 2 and the chancellor Jeremy Hunt on 1.7.

Last month, Hunt unveiled the budget that emphasised fiscal restraint and resisted calls for tax cuts.

While visiting Rochdale, Greater Manchester with Braverman to start his campaign for the local elections, Sunak unveiled a number of measures to crack down on sexual offenders.

In his opinion, creation of a new task force of specialist officers, tougher sentences for offenders and the collection of ethnicity data would root out child exploitation.

Sunak insisted that the government was right to wait until the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which was published six months ago.

“We’re responding to the recommendation of an independent inquiry to introduce a legal duty on those working with children to report abuse," Sunak was quoted as saying by the Times.

“What is clear is that when victims and other whistleblowers came forward, their complaints were often ignored by social workers, local politicians or even the police. The reason they were ignored was due to cultural sensitivity and political correctness. That is not right."

The Tory leader also defended Braverman’s comments explicitly linking sexual exploitation with British Pakistani males.