François Hollande has become the most unpopular French president on record, just as the beleaguered Socialist government was forced to make its second tax climbdown in one week following violent street protests in Brittany.

Only 26% of French people have a positive opinion of the Socialist president, a BVA poll showed . It was the worst score for a French leader since BVA began polling 32 years ago. Hollande, who never enjoyed a state of grace and saw his popularity plummet very soon after his election in May 2012, has now plunged lower than even the former right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy who had 30% approval at his lowest point during the economic crisis.

The poll shows Hollande's near-unanimous unpopularity among right-wing voters: 97% have a bad opinion of the Socialist leader, a level never reached by any president among supporters of other parties, even Sarkozy who deeply antagonised many left-wing voters.

Some 84% French people believed government policy was not efficient and 74% felt it was not fair. Meanwhile, in the run up to crucial local and European elections next spring, the far-right Front National is rising in popularity and now has the same level of approval ratings as the Socialist party.

The poll underlines the difficulties facing Hollande, whose consensus-style politics have increasingly seen him lampooned by the media and opposition as indecisive and lacking in authority or coherent policies. Meanwhile, his government, hit by in-fighting and u-turns has been criticised for being in disarray.

On Tuesday the government announced the suspension of an environment tax on heavy goods vehicles transporting commercial goods, after violent protests by agricultural workers in Brittany who were furious at unemployment and food-processing plant closures, not just the tax. The Breton protests were particularly awkward for the government because the western region is a left-wing heartland, where Hollande got some of his highest presidential scores. But the Breton protestors who want the eco-tax totally scrapped have now vowed to continue with more protests this weekend.

Days earlier, the government had backtracked on plans to increase tax on some savings products after an outcry from the public. Earlier this month, a u-turn was made to scrap a new corporate tax that had infuriated business leaders.

The government has had what media are calling a "calamitous" few months, with the finance minister first acknowledging French people were "fed up" with increasing taxation, then Hollande promising a "tax pause" next year only to be hastily corrected by his own prime minister who said no pause would come before 2015. The leadership's u-turns and have created a sense of government vulnerability in an increasingly gloomy country where voters are still waiting for the Socialists to fully turn-around unemployment and the struggling economy, and the smallest spark can cause protests. Hollande's recent poorly-received intervention in the controversial case of Leonarda, a Roma girl deported after being taken off a school bus, added to a sense of confusion and dithering clinging to the left-wing president.

Gael Sliman of the BVA pollsters told Le Monde that the label "indecisive" risked sticking as firmly to Hollande as the negative "bling, bling" tag stuck to Sarkozy.

The government denied that the suspension of the environment tax, which had been conceived by the right under Sarkozy but was due to come into force in 2014, was a capitulation to the latest lobby to oppose the government. "Courage is not obstinacy, it is listening, understanding," the prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said, promising more debate.

The Green party partners in the Socialist government demanded a new date be set for the introduction of the tax.