It’s payback time for voters

It won’t be much comfort to Rishi Sunak, but he’s not the only world leader being put to the electoral sword. Joe Biden will be lucky to survive the summer as the Democrats’ presidential nominee after his disastrous debate performance. Almost every opinion poll says he’s losing to Donald Trump. In France, Emmanuel Macron bet on a snap election, daring his country to vote for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. Voters accepted that bet and are making the French President pay. This weekend we could see Jordan Bardella, 28, asked to become the next prime minister. Justin Trudeau looks doomed as Prime Minister of Canada. Around the world, leaders are facing a reckoning.

Not so long ago, the reverse was true. Government approval ratings soared during the pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns. When Jacinda Ardern won by a landslide in October 2020, New Zealand’s borders remained shut to outsiders. Businesses were being offered government support to help keep them afloat, while those isolating with Covid were being paid up to $600 a week to stay at home. This was the great new offer to voters: protection from everything, including viruses, unemployment and economic downturns.

The public were more than happy to accept this new deal. Then the bill finally came in and the price – inflation – was too high. Jacinda-mania evaporated. Ardern and her party tanked in the polls and were looking down the barrel of defeat. ‘Bring it on,’ Ardern told supporters at a party conference just two years after her historic win. It was a hollow rallying cry. Three months later, she resigned.

It’s a similar story in Canada. Canadians re-elected Trudeau in September 2021, in the dying days of lockdown gratitude, and also before the bill landed.