Kemi Badenoch's popularity falls among Tory voters after Brexit bonfire row

Kemi Badenoch’s approval rating among Conservative voters has plummeted after her planned bonfire of Brexit laws was thwarted.

The Business Secretary blamed the Whitehall “blob” earlier this month as she scrapped plans to repeal thousands of EU-era regulations by the end of the year.

In this month’s ranking of Cabinet ministers by ConservativeHome, the Tory news and opinion website, Ms Badenoch’s net satisfaction score decreased by almost 15 points, from 60.4 to 46.7.

The slump means she has dropped from second to fourth – placing her below Ben Wallace, Penny Mordaunt and James Cleverly – among Conservative supporters who took part in the survey, which was published on Monday morning.

Kemi Badenoch remains defiant

Ms Badenoch remained defiant in the face of anger from Eurosceptic backbenchers who claim her decision to revoke only a fraction of retained Brussels laws by the end of the year, out of a total of 4,800, has damaged her chances in a future leadership contest.

During a heated urgent question in the House of Commons, she appeared to liken members of the European Research Group (ERG) to her political opponents in Labour and insisted she was striking the right balance, branding her critics “people who talk but can’t do”.

Elsewhere in the league table, Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the Commons, saw her net score rise from 49.5 last month to 62.4.

She was widely praised for her sword-carrying role at the King’s Coronation, which formed part of her official duties as Lord President of the Privy Council at the ceremony.

Ms Mordaunt wore a custom-made teal dress and cape for her sword-carrying role, holding the 8lb (3.6kg) Sword of State aloft for some 51 minutes.

Mr Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, remained in third place on 56.5, with criticisms of his approach towards China doing little to dent his popularity with the grassroots.

Mr Cleverly was forced to defend himself after refusing to reclassify Beijing as a “threat” in response to its aggressive foreign policy and persecution of Uyghur Muslims.

Rishi Sunak, who was sixth in April’s leaderboard, fell to 14th among his party’s supporters, with his score dropping from 47.4 to 21.6.

This is consistent with separate polling published on Monday by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, which showed the Prime Minister’s approval rating among all voters has sunk to its lowest level in three months.

Suella Braverman, his Home Secretary, rose a place from seventh to sixth, but her net percentage score decreased after a series of controversies in the past few weeks.

These included a row over a speeding ticket and her speech at the National Conservatism conference, which included remarks on migration that were seen as a challenge to Mr Sunak.

Mr Wallace, the Defence Secretary, remains the most popular member of Mr Sunak’s top team, as he continues to impress activists in his response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

For the first time in the history of the ConservativeHome survey, half a dozen Cabinet members registered a net negative approval rating.

Therese Coffey, the Environment Secretary, registered the lowest rating at -10.4, while Michael Gove, Grant Shapps, Andrew Mitchell, Jeremy Hunt and Robert Jenrick also scored below zero.

Paul Goodman, the website’s founder and a former Conservative MP, said it was “a sign that the panel is thoroughly fed up with the Government as a whole”.

“The scores of nearly everyone … [are] down, and those of the exceptions are only marginally up.”