Kemi Badenoch’s approval rating has overtaken Nigel Farage‘s for the first time in over a year, a poll has suggested. The Conservative leader’s popularity has increased slightly following her sacking of Robert Jenrick, who defected to Reform UK last week.

More in Common polling found the Leader of the Opposition’s net approval rating has risen to -11, the highest since December 2024, just a month after she first became leader. Mr Farage’s approval rating is -13, giving Mrs Badenoch a narrow edge over the Reform UK leader. The Conservative leader said in a letter to MPs on Monday that recent departures from the party were “not about policy differences or ideology, they are about character”.

Meanwhile, half of the 2,007 Britons polled said Mrs Badenoch handled the defection well by pre-emptively sacking Mr Jenrick, compared to only 12% who believe that she handled it poorly.

Reform UK is still narrowly winning the “Battle for the Right” of politics.

By a margin of 35% to 29%, Britons say that Reform UK represents the “Right” of British politics.

On Monday, Mr Farage said the “centre-Right is uniting” as he welcomed Andrew Rosindell to Reform UK.

Mr Rosindell became the second Conservative MP to jump ship in the space of a week after Mr Jenrick defected on Thursday.

He said he was persuaded to resign as a shadow foreign office minister on Mrs Badenoch’s front bench because of the “failure” of the Conservative Party on the issue of Chagossian self-determination.