The News
The era of the popular politician is over, a Financial Times columnist argued. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was only elected in July, but his approval rating has plunged 45 points with no clear cause. Other Western leaders are similarly despised: France’s Emmanuel Macron incurred the worst protests in his country in half a century, Australia has changed prime ministers seven times since 2007, and no US president wins 400 electoral college votes anymore.
The reason? “Decade after decade of peace and affluence has had the perverse consequence of raising expectations,” Janan Ganesh wrote. Few people alive in the West today have clear memories of existential war or uncontained financial crisis, and so they are harder to please: “The one constant is us.”