As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz comes under fire after losing painfully to the far-right AfD in a state election, he can console himself, says Janan Ganesh in the FT, that his counterpart in Paris is “also despised”. So were the two previous French presidents. None of the last five US leaders has managed an average approval rating above 50%. Here in inclusive Britain, we have hated “white, Asian, male, female, young, old, Conservative, Labour, southern and northern” prime ministers since 2016. Before that, it was not unheard of for one to rule for a decade. Between 1975 and 2007, Australia had four heads of government. It has had seven since. There are two possibilities: either all the big rich countries mysteriously suffered a simultaneous drop in the quality of their leaders, or voters have become harder to please. “It should be clear which is more plausible.”

The West does not have a leadership problem, it has a “followership problem”. Voters reject policies – “however objectively necessary” – that cost them anything. One result is vast levels of government debt; another is the “flaying alive” of any leader who tries to fix this, or anything else. In just the past decade, policies from which heads of government have “never really recovered” include, in France, raising the retirement age to 64 and, in Britain, a cut to winter fuel subsidies, amounting to all of £1.4bn. Imagine the predicament of the modern leader, trying to please an electorate that is “three or four generations into the welfare state and global peace”. The choice is stark: remain popular or make much-needed reforms. Without a crisis to make voters more “pliable”, Western nations have become “ungovernable”.

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