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What is there to fear?

Yes, OK, the Italian right isn’t quite as fluffy as our own. But still:

Meloni has been thrust into the limelight by FdI – a far-right party with roots in a pro-Mussolini party founded after the Second World War – topping opinion polls for the first time after effectively becoming the entirety of Italy’s opposition.

It is the only significant party not in Italian prime minister Mario Draghi’s emergency cross-spectrum administration. It has helped Meloni, 44, and the only female leader of a major Italina party, scoop up disaffected voters, particularly from the once-dominant and right-wing populist Lega.

Rome’s political destiny appears to be tied up with the fortunes of Draghi’s government, his economic plan and the right-wing populists that dominate the polls. And the end of president Sergio Mattarella’s term early next year could usher in early elections that bring about the right-wing coalition long feared by markets. After a period of unusual calm, is Italy heading for trouble once again?

Draghi has been tasked with reviving an economy that has not grown in real terms for 20 years and was hit hard by the pandemic.

A political establishment that hasn’t allowed – let alone produced – growth in two decades. Their overturning might well be welcomed by markets rather than feared.

11 thoughts on “What is there to fear?”

  1. I don’t really trust Salvini, he’s not nearly as clever as Bossi was.
    I’ve kind of lost track of Italian politics: are the FdI the same as Fini’s MSI ?

  2. New Labour – FdI – a centre-left party with roots in a pro-Mussolini party founded before the Second World War

  3. Their overturning might well be welcomed by markets rather than feared.

    I doubt it.

    On the contrary there would only be a bit more chaos and uncertainty. Italy’s most intractable problems all stem from its membership of the euro.

    Mario Draghi – the insider’s insider from an ECB perspective – is the man best suited to kicking the can down the road so until the end of the road is reached (and you can’t beat the EU at building extensions)so the markets will always prefer Draghi.

  4. The only problem with Draghi is that he has never achieved any level of popularity outside the echelons of bureaucrats, career politicians and half-witted econ journalists. How would he respond if people started burning effigies in the piazza! Warning them about CO2 emissions might not work too well. And besides, the donkey refuses to work with him

  5. No matter how weird it looks Post war Italian system managed to keep the communists out of gvt, despite regularly getting 30% vote share, and changing gvts every 2 years, so its commendable chaos in that sense.

  6. It makes the mind boggle : 30%, communist and at least 30% mafia etc. Who do they want to govern? Rocco?

  7. Is ‘meloni’ the Italian plural of ‘Melon’? Surely a female politician can’t go by the name ‘Melons’?

  8. So far left that they’ve gone around in a circle and become far right. Mussolini’s economy was Command with a capital C.

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