The pandemic of the century is putting all political leaders to the test, while a colossal state intervention has taken shape commensurate only to those of the 1930s and the Second World War. Donald Trump is suffering the consequences of the cheap demagogy with which he faced Covid-19 in the beginning, and perhaps of the excessive propaganda with which he precipitated the clash with Xi Jinping's China. Vladimir Putin is coming to terms with historic Russian weaknesses, magnified by the recent collapse in oil prices. Narendra Modi is seeing the spectre of famine descending over India. In Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump imitator, is hounded by the disillusionment of his electors. In France Emmanuel Macron faces, as he did with the yellow vests, the unknowns of a political tradition that was once monarchical and regicidal. Pedro Sánchez, in Spain, is walking the tightrope of balancing the various sections of his shaky coalition, the complicated mosaic of local autonomies and the relati