Italy’s political theatre of the absurd
Italy’s coalition government has collapsed in the most bizarre circumstances, even in the best theatrical tradition of Italian politics.
The centre–left alliance led by the Democratic party and the radical populist 5 Star Alliance has just lost its parliamentary majority as 18 members belonging to the tiny Italia Viva (Living Italy) party in the upper house have withdrawn their support.
Italia Viva has done so under the orders of its founder, the former socialist prime minister Matteo Renzi, who created the party last year and who for a long time saw himself as Italy’s answer to Tony Blair.
The withdrawal appears to be a supreme act of personal narcissism and political suicide. With Renzi’s party commanding 3 per cent and below in national polls, it is hard to conceive of any circumstances in which Renzi or any of his followers would be returned to parliament in a future general election. Friends, foes and the public in Italy – 73 per cent according to polls this morning – find Renzi’s move inexplicable or even downright idiocy.
Renzi said his party had to quit–pulling two cabinet ministers and a junior minister from the government on the way – because they disagreed with proposals on how to spend the €223 billion (about £189 billion) from the European Stability Fund for post-Covid recovery. Renzi has been arguing with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, himself a non-party man, over this for months.
So why now? Italy is undergoing a terrible new wave of Covid, in some areas surpassing the levels of disease and death last spring, which brought some of the most sophisticated hospitals in parts of Lombardy, Veneto and Liguria to their knees. Death rates are similar to those of the UK. According to Worldometer statistics, the UK has reported 3.2 million positive cases, and 84,767 deaths – from a population of 66.9 million. Italy has reported 2.3 million cases and 80,320 deaths from a population of 60.5 million.
This week the Italian government has proposed extending full lockdown into mid-April.
Some hospitals have been discussing a policy of ‘population-based triage’ – concentrating efforts on the most salvageable patients and cases.
Today Renzi has tweeted that “democracy is for always and cannot be halted even for Covid.” Vanity has been the hallmark, and deep flaw, of the man and his politics since he rose to prominence as the young mayor of Florence two decades ago. Coming in on the Socialist wing of politics, as the party of that name, the PSI or Partito Socialista Italiano, was disappearing, he helped found the Democratic Party. This brought him to power as prime minister – and the aping of Tony Blair was blatant.
It didn’t last long. In 2016 he came forward for a reasonable constitutional reform referendum to simplify the powers and set up of the two houses of parliament. It was to be followed another attempt to streamline the mish-mash of voting by proportional representation, direct election, and appointment of members of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The questions in the referendum of 2016 were baffling and long-winded. Fatally, Renzi followed Cameron on Brexit and turned the whole plebiscite into a confidence vote in him and his premiership. The result on 4 December 2016 was a loss by 20 per cent.
Renzi has never really recovered. He helped forge the current coalition on an alliance between the Democratic party and the 5 Star Alliance. He then left the Democrats to form the Italia Viva party, which has 18 seats in the Senate.
Now it will be hard for Giuseppe Conte to form a viable coalition. A snap election would be a victory for the populist right made up of Matteo Salvini’s Lega, the octogenarian Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, and the rising star of the nativist camp, Brothers of Italy led by the pugnacious and articulate Giorgia Meloni . According to polls this week these three parties together would command 50 per cent of the vote.