The 'why is Anneliese Dodds so anonymous?' debate is a fantastic example of politicos forgetting how much more engaged they are than the average person. The only Conservative politicians in 2010 who were nationally recognised were Cameron and Johnson.

At the start of 2020, most people had not heard of Keir Starmer and large numbers of people still have a pretty sketchy idea, as among other things, this v handy bit of work by @BritainThinks shows: https://twitter.com/britainthinks/status/1324299511972405248?lang=en

Philip Hammond was literally a Pointless answer *after* he became Chancellor. I see no data-led case that "36 per cent have heard of the Shadow Chancellor" is not a) good but also b) padded by people lying to pollsters.

One reason why I wrote when May called the 2017 election that it was a gamble is most people had not heard of *her or Jeremy Corbyn*, making the possibility something could go wrong for her high.

Assessing a shadow minister based on whether the public have heard of them is a bit like assessing them on whether they could get into the Liverpool XI: a test they and any plausible replacements would fail and tells you nothing about anything.