Italian coalition government collapses; a "new Mussolini" waits...

Italian governments tend to have very short lives. Since the end of WWII there have been hundreds... literally. They come and go like mushrooms after a spring rain. The latest, a coalition led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, teeters on the brink this evening, with Sig. Draghi saying he wants to resign to make way for a new government, only for Italian President Sergio Mattarella to reject his resignation and ask him to think up some way to hold together a parliamentary majority.

The trambusto ridicolo came about when senators from the once populist but now left-leaning Five Star Movement boycotted a confidence motion linked to a bill that contained a provision for a new garbage  incinerator to serve Rome, which they oppose on environmental grounds. Sig. Draghi had made clear he would interpret a walkout as a vote against his "unity government". 

The FSM walked out anyway, so the PM tendered his resignation, saying that the trust underpinning the government had come undone, and that the conditions for a functional government "no longer exist"... as if they ever did, in the Italian republic.

Theoretically Sig. Draghi could stay on at the head of a new government without the Five Stars. However, having been chosen by the Pesident in February 2021 to lead a unity coalition, the PM has indicated that he wants no part of that scheme. "There is no government without the Five Stars," he said, adding that he wouldn’t lead a coalition with an alternate makeup. 

If Sig. Draghi succeeds in quitting, Italy be forced into yet another election, which European "progressives" and the controlled media already clutching their pearls in fear of a resurgent right. In the spring of 2018,  as Italy prepared for its first general election in five years, the most-feared party was Matteo Salvini's far-right League. See "Italian top court OKs Fascist salute as right-wing coalition heads for election victory", WWW 24/2/18. 

Things didn't quite turn out as Walt predicted (lifetime pct. 978), as the conservative/populist vote was divided among Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, the League and the new kids on the right-hand side of the block, Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy).

Things are different today. Brothers of Italy, the descendant of a party formed in 1946 by the lingering supporters of Benito Mussolini, has steadily moved from the political fringes to being neck-and-neck with the League. Recent opinion polls put the FdI in a statistical tie -- 21% each -- for most popular party, with the centre-left Democratic Party, led by Giuseppe Brandoni. [Ed., please check that.]

Giorgia Meloni, a member of the Chamber of Deputies and former minister in Silvio Berlusconi's fourth cabinet, is said to have a good chance of being Italy's next prime minister. She has fast become a a celebrity, with videos about her on Facebook (click here to see "Giorgia Meloni a 'Cartabianca' 22/2/22"), and YouTube, and a best-selling autobiography out last year. 

Guido Crosetto, a co-founder of FdI, says voters feel they can trust Ms Meloni because she has: "consistency, reliability, thoroughness. She does not speak by slogans or based on polls.... We [the FdI party] do well in the polls because our party remains consistent with its ideas."

Giorgia Meloni was just 15 when she became involved in the youth organisation of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), founded after World War II by neo-fascists and veterans of Mussolini's Italian Social Republic.

The popularity of Fratelli d'Italia comes amid a broader shift to the right in Italian politics in recent times. See "Told ya! Anti-immigrant backlash pushes Italy sharply right", WWW 5/3/18. 

The League, once the leading party of the right, is now down to 15% in the polls, with FdI picking up a lot of the League's votes, and even making inroads in northeastern Italy, a League bastion since the 1990s. Businesspeople in northern Italy say they like Meloni's anti-tax, anti-bureaucracy style. "There is too much red tape, whether imposed by Rome or Venice [the regional capital]," said a businessman in Vicenza. "Maybe Meloni has realised that."

FdI is unabashedly rightist. Its literature contains slogans such as "Italy and Italians first" and aims to protect Italian identity from Islamization, while calling for the largest family and birth support plan in Italy's history. Convincing moderate voters to switch to a party with radical roots is "not an easy bet", said one analyst, adding,"Meloni is trying, though."

The controlled media in Europe (and now America), cowering in fear, have dubbed Ms Meloni "the new Mussolini". It has been said of the "old" Mussolini that at least he made the trains run on time. If Ms Meloni can make the planes depart and arrive on time, she should be a shoo-in. Walt wishes her buona fortuna!