Rishi Sunak: Having gone from hero to zero – can the chancellor go back again?

Until the spring, the chancellor was well placed to succeed Boris Johnson if the time came. After a testing few months he appears to have rediscovered what made him popular before, writes John Rentoul

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak (Reuters)

One of the indices that is as volatile as Twitter’s share price is the Conservative Home cabinet league table. This monthly beauty contest of ministers is a survey of a panel of Conservative Party members that may not be strictly representative, but it accurately predicted the last leadership election and is watched obsessively by those ministers themselves. Last month, Rishi Sunak came bottom.

Until his poorly received spring statement on 23 March, and the report by my colleague Anna Isaac of his wife Akshata Murthy’s non-dom tax status on 6 April, he was usually mid-table and, because he was also so popular with the general public, well placed to succeed Boris Johnson, if anything should happen to him.

Since then, he has been tested as never before. “He’s a lot tougher than people think,” said a friend of his. “All this stuff about how he could have just gone off and spent time on a beach was wrong. If he wanted to spend time on a beach he could do it. He doesn’t need to do this; he has chosen to do it.”