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After two months of negotiations, Italy’s new government is finally coming together. The Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, has had the difficult task of herding several cats into a viable government, which is now a coalition of two populist parties, the Five Star Movement (5SM) and the League (is no longer prefixed with ‘Northern’). 5SM was the largest party, while the League was the dominant element in a right-wing coalition of Forza Italia and the tiny neo-fascist Fratelli d’Italia.
This coalition permutation has come to pass because the centre left Democratic Party’s former leader, Matteo Renzi, refused to countenance a coalition with 5SM, and Forza Italia deputies eased aside Berlusconi, enabling 5SM to partner with the League. They need Forza’s tacit support in parliament.
But neither the League leader, 45-year-old Matteo Salvini, nor 5SM’s 31-year-old Luigi Di Maio wanted to be prime minister, at least not this time around. Instead, it looks like it’s going to be the lawyer, professor and political newcomer, Giuseppe Conte, who will have to be approved by the president along with cabinet ministers and a German-style written coalition agreement which is still a work in progress.
Its various iterations have included such things as an absolute right to self defence, a ban on freemasons in politics, and defence of ‘food sovereignty’. One shared constant is a desire to crack down on corruption, though it is striking that the coalition agreement fails to mention the concentrated power of Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset empire.
Since few Italian governments in the previous seven decades have completed even half of their five-year terms, what is most likely to go wrong with this insurgent one, even though today at least six in ten Italians approve of it?
In terms of governing experience, the League has the edge since it has been in previous coalitions (usually with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia) in 1994-95, 2001-06, and 2008-11. Despite being intimately associated with Berlusconi’s pro-business agenda, the League has managed to retain its protest vote image while shifting its focus from euroscepticism to strident hostility towards migrants.
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