Vorrei morir
Maria Callas’ famous lament in the spellbinding ‘O Mio Babbino Caro‘ sums up my thoughts when looking at today’s Italian general election. Indeed, given the state of the polls, one might find hurling oneself into the Arno a preferable alternative to paying attention to an election which could see the country ending up being run by a glorified clown in conjunction with the reanimated corpse of 80s/90s corporate sleaze and opulence.
The final polls look something like this:
- Centre-right coalition: 37.5%
- Five Star Movement: 26.3%
- Centre-left coalition: 26.3%
Now the polls have fluctuated so the exact composition of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate is hard to pin down but there are two near certainties. Firstly, former comedian Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement) will be the largest single party. Secondly, the centre-right’s coalition will be bigger than the centre-left’s. As such, the big question will be whether M5S choose to throw their lot in with the governing PD of the centre/centre-left, working with the former Prime Minister and ‘Europe’s last Blairite’ Matteo Renzi, or with Silvio Berlusconi’s rag tag group of wealthy capitalists and friendly neighbourhood neo-fascists. Naturally, the second seems like the most likely choice.
M5S are a difficult beast to understand and really could only have emerged in the context of a country beset with decades of institutional deficiency and corruption. More than having a political programme per se, their popularity stems from the desire to kick back against the established parties and personalities so deeply embedded in the mess that is the Italian political system. Like all good protest parties, they’re against pretty much everything but don’t really stand for much in its place. A vote for them is a vote against the right, the left, the liberal centre, the EU, the US, Russia, and, of course coherent and competent democratic governance. Comparisons with UKIP, even though they share a grouping in the European Parliament, are flawed, however. UKIP’s brand of populism means they quite clearly occupy some spaces of the traditional right and some of the traditional left, where M5S really don’t fit anywhere on the political compass precisely because they don’t stand for any real specific policies; their challenge is a systemic, rather than ideological one.
I get the feeling that electorally it makes more sense for M5S to side with the centre-right because that’ll give them room to ask for things like a referendum on the Euro whilst simultaneously giving them sufficient space to still portray themselves as the anti-system party by distancing themselves from the conservative tendencies of Silvio and co. when necessary. There’s also the fact that they’re actually sort of similar in the way they operate; top-down guidance from a patriarch who is mostly behind the scenes but have chosen younger, fresh faces to front their latest schemes for power (the relative unknown Luigi Di Maio and current European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, respectively).
The PD, conversely, have suffered serious brand damage since Renzi’s suicidally stupid decision to hold a constitutional referendum in late 2016, the resulting failure of which led to his own, self-imposed, resignation from the premiership. I really doubt we’ll see a German-type situation either where the two pro-system coalitions get together to keep out the anti-system challenge. In general Italians are simply not that practical politically speaking (I can say that, I’m part-Italian) and the recent attacks and subsequent tense political atmosphere around the ever-present issue of the migrant crisis mean the division between left and right is much more toxic and divisive than that between the still fairly moderate and calm political mainstream in Germany.
Both the Camera dei Deputati and the Senato are being elected in this vote, and the centre-right look like they’ll end up with a plurality in both. The perfect bicameralism of the two houses mean that both are equally important, and equally impotent. A majority in both is necessary for any sort of functioning government (not that that happens very often in Italy). Originally set up as a liberal innovation to stem the advance of communism and the resurgence of fascism in the post-war environment, the design now enables little more than deadlock given the proportional voting system used in Italy, and corruption and collusion is often the only way politicians find they can get anything done. As such, even if the M5S were to go into government with the centre-left, the systematic issues are so bad in Italian politics it won’t be until we get the very constitutional reform Renzi (nobly, but stupidly) threw himself on the sword for, that the fundamental flaws can be overcome.
Why is the right so resurgent? As much as I spend time trying to defend the EU, I think the appetite for anti-immigration policies is largely a product of the Union’s horrendously incompetent managing of the migrant crisis. The cruel and ridiculous Dublin rules, mandating migrants must register for asylum in the first country they arrive in, have been exploited by the northern countries who have the very infrastructure and capacity to take in people fleeing from death, brutality and starvation, to turn people back to Mediterranean countries like Greece and Italy. These are countries still nowhere near recovered from the 2008 financial crisis and that can’t afford social protection for their own citizens, let alone those of the parts of the world Europe and America have joined forces to repeatedly and catastrophically destabilise over the past century(ies). These are the perfect conditions for the right to whip up xenophobic rhetoric and it’ll only be when proper quotas are established and accepted by the likes of the UK, France, Germany, the low countries, and Scandinavia that their evil propagandising will be in vain.
This is also why I think we desperately need variable geometry right now, in how the EU functions. Countries too often bail out of their moral obligations on the basis that everyone is operating on the same level, and the EU must act to lubricate such rigidity. A tiered system of membership could be a solution – having something like stronger, northern countries being part of a full union that bears full rights and responsibilities for Europe and its neighbours, with lower tiers of membership for more socially conservative and economically struggling countries in the south and east who don’t have to fulfill all of the social-moral obligations the modern world demands of Europe, but simultaneously aren’t given full access to things like the single market. It’s become too difficult to reconcile such wildly diverging economies and cultures, and if the EU doesn’t reform to reflect this, then Merkel and Macron will be overseeing the demise of what once was a set of institutions that carried the hopes for peace and compassion of a continent torn apart by war and bloodshed.
As for Italy, I do earnestly worry for the future of the country of my grandfather, but who knows, maybe we’ll see a surprise akin to last year’s UK election; the left will do better than expected, and the fascists will be defeated again.
Comunque vada, in bocca al lupo Italia
Electorally 