Not even Bob Hawke could escape this new incumbency trap

Welcome to the new reality format, presently streaming in most advanced democracies: the political honeymoon from hell. Usually, it follows the same narrative arc. After the electoral nuptials, things quickly go south. You don’t see us or hear us, complain the voters. Come to think of it, you never really got us in the first place. And we were never really into you. It was a joyless union from the off.

Infidelity rarely enters into it, for it is not as if the aggrieved electorate has fallen in love with another party. Indeed, the absence of attractive alternatives speaks of the larger problem: the lovelessness of politics across the board. That said, voter disaffection is felt more strongly by those in power. Opposition politicians get off lightly. Those who can articulate grievances. Those who can channel rage. Those who can sum up the mood of discontent in a slogan or viral meme. This political marriage trap is primarily an incumbency trap.

Caught in the incumbency trap? Keir Starmer, Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump.Credit:

Presently, Westminster offers up the most extreme version of this tragicomedy. Just three months into what should be a five-year term, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has seen his approval ratings plummet by 45 points. On entering 10 Downing Street, he came across as something of a sourpuss, grumpily complaining the Tories had bequeathed the incoming Labour government with an even worse mess than anticipated. Then came “Frockgate”, the storm over the freebies that Starmer has accepted – and declared – which include £16,000 worth of clothing and almost £2500 worth of eyewear. Not a good look when his government has cut winter fuel payments to millions of pensioners.

According to one poll, he is already less popular than his unpopular predecessor, the Conservative leader Rishi Sunak. Starmer, remember, won a thumping parliamentary landslide of 167 seats, but Labour received just 34 per cent of the vote. A passionless mandate.

Nor is it just Britain where incumbents emit the whiff of early decay. As Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times recently observed, in a column headlined “The end of the popular politician”, “Olaf Scholz is set to become just the second one-term chancellor of Germany since the Federal Republic’s creation in 1949,” neither of Emmanuel Macron’s predecessors secured extended stays in the Élysée Palace, and “Australia has had seven changes of prime minister since 2007. It had four in the previous 32 years.”

Era-defining politicians such as Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Bob Hawke, John Howard and Angela Merkel look like museum pieces.

“Any boss who sacks someone for not turning up to work today is a bum!“: Bob Hawke, celebrating Australia’s America’s Cup triumph in 1983, went on to become our longest-serving Labor prime minister. Credit: Bob Jen

In America, a constitutional amendment brought in after Franklin Delano Roosevelt won four consecutive elections prohibits presidents from going on and on. Presently, however, US voters don’t seem to be in the mood for longevity. Donald Trump failed to win re-election in 2020, and Joe Biden, before stepping aside, seem headed for defeat in 2024. Therefore, we are seeing that rarity in US history: consecutive one-term presidents.

Trump, who won the Electoral College in 2016 but not the nationwide vote, never even got to enjoy a political honeymoon. Since Gallup started measuring presidential popularity, he is the only incumbent never to register a 50 per cent job approval rating at any point during his tenure. Biden’s grace period was short-lived. Not since July 2021 – before the botched withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan – has he broken the 50 per cent approval threshold.

In Australia, Anthony Albanese initially bucked this trend by enjoying an unusually extended stay in the honeymoon suite. It lasted until his first anniversary in power. But high interest rates, a cost-of-living crisis and a failed Voice referendum put his approval rating on a downward trajectory. Now he finds himself in the same incumbency trap as other world leaders. And even if he wins the next election outright, or becomes the head of a minority government, he does not look like the sort of commanding leader who will have the word “era” affixed to his name.

Localised factors sometimes explain why leaders are no longer so durable. In the UK, the turmoil of Brexit led to six prime ministers in eight years. In Australia, workaholic Kevin Rudd may have got to spend more years in The Lodge had he spent more hours in bed. But anti-incumbency is a global phenomenon with shared traits.

Grievance politics is being fuelled by large-scale immigration flows, income inequality, housing crises and the sense, in a globalised economy, of personal economic powerlessness.

Populist politicians, like Trump, trade on fear rather than hope. Social media has spread poison and sped up political cycles. In an age of hyper-partisanship, politics has become relentlessly – and recklessly – oppositional.

Bipartisanship generally favours the incumbent, which does not marry with the anti-incumbent vibe. Just consider Trump’s scuppering earlier this year of a bipartisan congressional deal to address the border crisis. Rather than fixing a problem, he preferred to exploit it.

With politicians looking for issues rather than solutions, unresolved grievances beget more grievances. And thus we end up with a pernicious paradox: populism is killing off the popular politician.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.