It's too early to tell whether the A-level fiasco will decisively damage the government's reputation for competence. However, the common trend in its ratings across issues highlights how evaluations of performance in one domain can spillover into others.

This is a danger for incumbents that @ProfJaneGreen and I identified in The Politics of Competence.

What is interesting from the @YouGov data is how the rally-round-the-flag effect led to an improvement in the government's ratings across many policy issues after the introduction of lockdown in March - but these have been steadily declining since.

The drop in evaluations of performance of the government has been steep over the past few weeks - suggesting it will want the news cycle to move on quickly and public opinion to stabilise. But its overall ratings still are substantially better than at the start of the year...