A sitting president who goes for it without reading the room. We could be talking about French President Emmanuel Macron's shock dissolution of parliament that this coming Sunday could usher in France's first far-right government since Nazi occupation. Or we could be talking about a floundering US President Joe Biden, who at 81 broke his campaign promise to only seek one term in office and who turned in a disastrously weak performance in last Thursday's debate with Donald Trump.

Will Biden persist? What is preventing Trump from returning to power through the ballot box in November? 

More broadly, why are voters in 2024 ready to forgive or condone what happened in 2021? With Covid, the climate emergency and superpower tensions with China and Russia, Western thinkers had thought voters wanted to revert back to a strengthening of institutions and alliances.

Instead, familiar nativist figures who had been written off have come roaring back. Why? And what's stopping them?

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown.