How many of the Shadow Cabinet can you name?

A new poll suggests that it's a real struggle for voters. Can you do any better?

The results of the poll were reported in the Evening Standard this week, under a cover story asking, "Will the real Keir Starmer stand up?'

The main story is a good one for voting behaviour and looks at the significance of the party leader. Psephologists are divided on this one, and personally I don't think it matters all that much. Yes, the leader is the face of the party and hence becomes interchangeable with the name of the party in the minds of voters, but I don't think who the incumbent is can win or lose elections. For instance, Labour continue to hold a massive gap over the Tories when it comes to voting intentions, but "half the public does not know what the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer stands for" (to quote the same Standard article). By the way, the lack of knowledge or confusion over what Starmer and Labour stand for echoes one of my earlier blog entries about the fuzziness of Labour's environmental stance.

Anyway, back to the Shadow Cabinet.

According to the paper, the main findings:

• When asked to name people in the shadow Cabinet, only Angela Rayner got into double figures in public recognition.
• Jeremy Corbyn was named by more people than 20 actual shadow Cabinet members.
• Only seven out of 30 of Sir Keir’s top team were mentioned by at least three per cent of respondents.

In more detail:

"When people were asked to name shadow Cabinet members off the top of their head and with no prompting, 23 per cent mentioned Deputy Leader Ms Rayner.

For Ms Reeves it was nine per cent, followed by shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting on five per cent, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and shadow climate secretary Ed Miliband four per cent, with shadow levelling-up secretary Lisa Nandy three per cent.

Level-pegging with Mr Corbyn (who is not in the shadow Cabinet) on two per cent were shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth, shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry, and party chair Ms Dodds.

Six were on one per cent including shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson and shadow defence secretary John Healey.

Eleven got an asterick, after being mentioned by a few people but not getting to one per cent, including shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds and shadow international trade secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds.

Three were named by no-one including shadow justice secretary Steve Reed and shadow environment secretary Jim McMahon."

So this might make a nice end of term quiz, or prompt for a bit of analysis of voting behaviour. The full list of Shadow Cabinet members can be found here. Maybe students could have a second go with pictures included in the quiz?!