By Bertrand Benoit in Berlin, David Luhnow in London, and Noemie Bisserbe in Paris

Across Europe, voters are fed up and taking it out on their leaders.

This week, Britain's ruling Labour Party had its worst result ever in local elections as voters angry about a persistently weak economy and high immigration punished Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is backed by just 20% of voters.

Last month, Europe's longest-serving leader, Hungary's Viktor Orban, was swept out of office by a wave of discontent over the sluggish economy and a government that many saw as corrupt.

Elsewhere in Europe, the picture is similarly bleak for those now in power. In Germany, a left-right government that is breaking public spending records is also plumbing uncharted popularity lows.

The diminished incumbents can do little to placate an angry electorate, as they contend with melting parliamentary majorities, internal divisions and empty public coffers. The public's frustration is, meanwhile, boosting parties at the far ends of the political spectrum.

"We see revolutionary changes in geopolitics, technology, AI, social coherence, and we see political systems that are struggling to keep up and manage these changes," said Norbert Röttgen, a veteran German conservative lawmaker. "Then there is a growing sense that if you're part of an elite, you can insulate yourself from these changes, and if you're not, you can't."

In a survey tracking the popularity of 24 heads of state and government, the French, German and British leaders occupied the bottom three spots, according to Morning Consult, a market research company.

The crisis of trust has played out differently in different countries, depending on the rhythm of elections and the peculiarities of the political system.

In Britain, Starmer's net approval rating of -50 -- the difference between the 20% who approve and 70% who disapprove -- is roughly tied with Liz Truss for the worst of any prime minister since pollsters began tracking the question in the 1970s. This week, his left-wing Labour Party lost more than half its seats in local councils across the country, including several historic strongholds.

Britain is a good example of Europe's broader woes: families aren't seeing their incomes grow, leaving them feeling left behind compared with the more dynamic economies of the U.S. and Asia. Repeated energy shocks, from the war in Ukraine to the current conflict in the Middle East, have raised the cost of living and soured the mood further.

Having left the European Union with no clear plan for what came next, Britain damaged business investment. That was followed by a debt-fueled spending boom during the pandemic that has now left the government with no fiscal wiggle room, even as the country faces rising costs from aging and new spending needs like defense. Starmer now faces unpopular trade-offs: ever higher taxes or increased spending in one area paid for by cutting spending in another.

"If the size of your cake is fixed, and people say they don't want to pay ever more taxes, that means the only way to give the National Health Service or defense more money is to take it away from local government or overseas aid," said Tony Travers, a political scientist at the London School of Economics. "So people see more potholes and say 'what's going on?'"

Voters see Starmer as simply not up to the challenge, according to analysts. Lacking charisma and exhibiting weak leadership, he is regularly described in the British press as wooden, an automaton or a "doormat" for more forceful personalities in his fractious party.

Paul Rendle, a 66-year-old electronic service engineer, grew up in a British working-class family that reliably voted Labour. But open borders with the European Union meant a surge in immigration from Eastern Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s -- which meant more competition for workers like Rendle. He voted to leave the EU in the 2015 referendum and backed the Conservatives in 2019.

Now, he says, things are worse than ever. Under the Tories, immigration soared after Brexit, only now there are fewer European workers arriving and more families from poorer countries, which Rendle fears won't help the economy. He's now turning to the anti-immigration party Reform in anger at both Labour and the Conservatives.

Populists, too, have succumbed to economic discontent. In Hungary, after two years of stagnation and steadily rising cost of living, voters this year ended the 16-year reign of Orban, a populist prime minister and ally of President Trump.

Italy's Giorgia Meloni, a rare right-wing antiestablishment figure to lead a western European government, faced a 55% disapproval rate last month, according to Morning Consult -- the same as Rob Jetten, the progressive Dutch prime minister. In Spain, despite a comparatively robust economy, some 57% were unhappy with the work of Pedro Sanchez, the left-wing prime minister and vocal Trump critic.

In France, it is the centrist President Emmanuel Macron who has become the lightning rod for frustration. His popularity fell to 20% this month, according to a recent Elabe poll, making him one of the most unpopular French leaders in recent history.

Macron, who attended the country's top schools, "has become the embodiment of everything populists hate," said Olivier Costa, a research professor at the Paris-based Sciences Po university and France's National Center for Scientific Research.

Like Britain, France is slowly going broke. With the country's debt at a record equivalent of $4.1 trillion, France now has few options to deal with the energy crisis stemming from the war in Iran. Instead the government has raised taxes this year to rein in the country's deficit and raise military spending.

Macron's decision in 2024 to dissolve the National Assembly produced the most fragmented National Assembly in the history of France's modern Fifth Republic. Since then, Macron has churned through four different prime ministers, evoking the political instability that marked the pre-World War II period across Europe.

Even spending money doesn't guarantee success. After taking office a year ago, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pledged to fix the economy, in part by spending more than a trillion dollars on defense and infrastructure in the next 12 years.

Voters would feel the change by the summer, he promised.

Summer came and went. Berlin did crack down on immigration -- a perennial irritant since the 2015 refugee crisis -- but the economy has continued to stagnate, thanks in part to Trump's tariffs and rocketing energy prices from the Iran war.

The coalition, a fractious left-right alliance, has struggled to react. An ambitious blueprint for far-reaching economic overhauls was quietly shelved this spring because coalition leaders couldn't agree on the measures, according to a senior official.

Only 13% of voters are satisfied with the work of the government, the lowest in more than 20 years, according to a poll by public broadcaster ARD this week. Support for Merz's Christian Democratic Union is now at 22%, his worst rating to date, while the far-right Alternative for Germany scores 27%, a record high, another poll by the Forsa polling group found.

What voters are missing is "the conviction that established parties can be trusted to manage the country and deal with the problems," said Peter Matuschek, head of Forsa. "This basic trust, which was a fixture of the postwar era, is gone."

Fragmentation, a result of the growing antiestablishment backlash, has accentuated the paralysis. There used to be three big parties in Germany's parliament in the 1970s. Since the mid-2010s, there have been five or six, forcing parties to work in unwieldy alliances that often can't agree.

When he returns to his constituency, Röttgen, the veteran German conservative lawmaker, says he hears the usual gripes about the cost of living and energy prices. "But the main complaint isn't that. It's about how we in power don't seem capable of working together as a team to solve these problems."

Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com, David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com and Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 08, 2026 23:00 ET (03:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.