Mark Drakeford is better known than Keir Starmer in Wales. His government got to take much more credit for the coronavirus response/vaccine rollout than English and Scottish Labour did. The SNP also seems to doing relatively well despite its scandals - perhaps people throughout the country are just getting behind their state government, or Westminster in the absence of one.
I think this point can not be underestimated. In opinion polling before 2019, the UK Labour leader was consistently better known than the Welsh Labour leader. Since Covid, Drakeford's numbers are basically the same as Boris Johnson in terms of numbers who can give an opinion and notably higher than Keir Starmer.
Never has a Welsh politician been so well known.
So, basically Drakeford’s popularity is a result of doing a good job with Covid as opposed to something really specific about him? As in it’s something we’ve seen around the world with incumbents that had a good response to Covid. Without sidetracking too much, I think that part of the thing with Starmer is that we haven’t seen him run a general election campaign.
