Italy

Italy’s new populist government – the first in western Europe – collapsed last night before it even had the chance to govern for a single day. Italy, the Eurozone’s third largest economy and the beating pulse of European civilisation, now finds itself in a constitutional crisis as grave as any of the many it has had to confront since the fall of fascism in 1945. The way this thing pans out in the next days and weeks will effect the future not just of Italy but of Europe. And indirectly also of Britain with Brexit. The two Italian populist parties which were on the verge of forming a government that

The people of the Eurozone’s third largest economy  – Italy –  yesterday evening became the first in western Europe to get what is popularly known as a ‘populist’ government. The imperial eurocracy will not – cannot – allow such a mortal threat to the EU from the patriotic people to survive – not in Italy. The markets are getting decidedly agitated. Game on. Giuseppe Conte, a 53-year-old law professor at the University of Florence, who has never been involved in politics let alone been elected to the Italian Parliament, is Italian Prime Minister. More than two months after inconclusive elections on 4th March, the Italian President Sergio Mattarella was compelled

Paolo Gentiloni, who may now have to step down since his Democratic party got only 18.7 per cent of the vote in the Italian elections, is the fourth Italian prime minister in a row not to have been chosen by the electorate. Voters have shown a repeated disinclination to support the candidate of Brussels, so Brussels has found ways of imposing one. Italy has not had the prime minister of its choice since Silvio Berlusconi was brought down, with the support of EU leaders, in 2011. After the latest result, when that 18.7 per cent represents the only uncritically pro-EU section of voter opinion, Brussels is in a quandary. Try

It’s nice to get an election prediction right. Well, more or less right anyway. The Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) – the drain-the-swamp-screw-everything protest movement founded by a comedian and run like a Scientology sect – has got many more votes in Sunday’s Italian general elections than opinion polls had suggested. According to exit polls conducted by Italy’s state broadcaster RAI, the M5S has got 31.5 per cent of the vote cast, which makes it, by a long way, the party with the most votes. Before Italy’s required opinion poll black-out two weeks before general election day the M5S remained consistently on 27 per cent. In my last post I predicted this – saying

I’ve been hearing disturbing but well-informed voices about the result of the election in Italy, the Eurozone’s third biggest economy, which if correct will cause the global liberal elite to go ape and try to section Italy. The result which such voices are predicting will have a similarly disturbing effect on global libertarian conservatives. As for the markets, they will go bananas. Here’s what these voices are saying. The anti-party Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) which is run like a Scientology sect and would if it got the chance replace Parliament with direct democracy on the internet will get many more votes than suggested in the last opinion polls before Italy’s

The man who could become Italy’s next prime minister is sat just opposite the entrance to the huge US and Nato airbase near Catania in Sicily at a hotel confiscated from the Mafia. It’s not Silvio Berlusconi, no matter how much the British press tells us that ‘Berlusconi is Back!’ Silvio Il Magnifico (as I call him) cannot be prime minister because he is banned from public office after his four-year jail sentence for tax fraud in 2012 (commuted to a year’s community service in an old people’s home). No, the man I’m talking to is Matteo Salvini, leader of Lega, the leading party on the right (15 per cent,

A potentially significant moment in the travails of the EU was lost in the drama of John Major’s (re-)intervention into the Brexit debate on Monday. Over in Italy, another former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, also made an intervention. He called for Italy to introduce a separate currency alongside the euro which would allow it to ‘recover monetary sovereignty’. Berlusconi half floated a suggestion along these lines back in 2014. But now he says he is ‘completely convinced’ by it. He suggests that Italy should keep the euro for imports and exports, while using a different currency – a new domestic money supply – for state payments to ‘help the left behind’. Berlusconi’s