Remember Matteo Renzi? In May 2014, The Guardian asked if the then 39-year-old centre-left Italian prime minister was “the man to save Europe’s soul?” Turns out he wasn’t even the man to save his own job. By the end of 2016 he became just another name in an ever-expanding list of former Italian leaders.

Signor Renzi was, in fact, just the prototype for a slightly younger generation of millennial leaders (born in the 1980s) who have fundamentally weakened the traditional political parties they were supposed to rescue. These one-time saviors invariably depart with their parties internally fractured, shorn of public support and often embroiled in focus-sapping debates about personal judgement and suitability for office.