Who do the British public think is capable of succeeding May and negotiating a better Brexit deal?
Theresa May faces a vote of no-confidence tonight, meaning that there could soon be a Tory leadership campaign. But who could succeed her? According to a YouGov survey, none of Theresa May's potential successors are more likely to make a good prime minister than a bad one.
Boris Johnson has the strongest support at 22%, but also the strongest negative sentiment towards him, with 57% saying he would make a bad Prime Minister. One in eight (12%) feel they don’t know enough about him to say.
Dominic Raab is the least well-known of May’s potential successors: almost half (46%) feel they don’t know enough about him to say whether he would make a good or bad PM. Just one in eleven (9%) think he would do well, and a third (30%) think he would do badly.
Among Conservative voters, Michael Gove is the least popular choice for successor. Just over half (51%) think he would make a bad prime Minister, with Boris Johnson the second worst rated at 48%, and Jeremy Hunt in third at 41%.
Not one successor is seen as capable of negotiating a better Brexit deal by a majority of Britons or Conservative voters.
Boris Johnson is seen as most likely to be able to negotiate a better deal by both the public as a whole (20%) and Conservative voters, albeit according to only 31% respondents. One in eight (12%) think David Davis could do a better job, but less than one in ten think any of the other possible successors could.
Brexiteers are four times more likely to think David Davis, Dominic Raab and Michael Gove would do a better job than Theresa May at handling Brexit than Remainers (22% vs 5%, 14% vs 3%, and 12% vs 3% respectively). They are six times more likely to think Boris Johnson would negotiate a better deal (38% vs 6%).
On both who would make a good or bad PM, and on who would negotiate a better Brexit deal, at least a quarter of Britons felt they did not know enough about the candidate to say for every potential successor except Boris Johnson.
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