Italy cries, but the others don't laugh either. In fact, it would seem that while Italy is always waiting for an (improbable) new government, the leaders of France and Great Britain are not doing too well: Francois Hollande is worse than Sarkozy and is the most unpopular president ever after 10 months in office, while on the other side of the Channel the former British Foreign Minister David Milband he gives in to the family dispute with his brother Ed, leader of the Labor Party, and even announces his retirement from politics.
The Labor MP will therefore leave his seat in the House of Lords and fly into a gilded exile in New York, where according to the Daily Mirror he was offered a prestigious position in a leading foundation. An exit from the scene perhaps painful but more than comfortable, while the tenant of the Elysée, elected less than a year ago and nailed to a delicate five-year mandate, which promises to be increasingly complicated amid the financial crisis and disliked by his fellow citizens.
Indeed, in March, according to a survey conducted by the newspaper Le Figaro (who has centre-right tendencies), it would seem that the socialist leader is proving to be the least liked president since 1981, i.e. since when there has been this kind of survey of popular consensus during the current mandate: not even one French out of three still trusts him, 30%, significantly less than the 37% recorded by Sarkozy in the same period of time, of 40% of Chirac in 1995 or again of the plebiscitary 58% of Mitterrand in 1981.
Hollande has therefore lost 25% of his approval rating compared to the first month of his inauguration (when he started from a mediocre 55%, which dropped to 40% after just 4 months): it was mainly public employees who abandoned him (-18%) and the voters of the more radical left, from ecologists (-15%) to the Front de Gauche (-16%), who very probably are not even forgiving him for the military intervention in Mali. And while right-wing voters have never trusted him, it is the same sympathizers of the socialist party who turn up their noses at Hollande's policy (-8%). Above all, the serious worsening of the economic crisis that is characterizing the first presidential year weighs heavily: for the first time since 2009, the GDP was negative in the last quarter of 2012 (and zero for the whole year) and the unemployment is at an all-time high, having passed the 10% threshold. With these numbers, times are tough for everyone. Even for those who have a president.
