Could Giorgia Meloni become Italy’s first female PM?

Last summer, a bare-chested Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing League and interior minister at the time, roamed the trendiest beaches on the Adriatic coast drinking Mojitos and dancing to DJ sets. But twelve months on, the partying has stopped and Salvini has lost his magic touch: the League has been ousted from the government and support is draining away by the day. ‘Papeete Syndrome’ – named after the tawdry beach club which became the League’s unofficial headquarters last August – is now a synonym of self-defeating hubris in Italy’s political lexicon. And today Italian conservatives worship a new idol: Giorgia Meloni.

Salvini’s decline in the polls has largely coincided with Meloni’s meteoric rise. Her party ‘Brothers of Italy’ has surged from five to 15 per cent over the past year, while the League has tumbled from over 35 to around 23 per cent. How was this possible? Part of the reason is that Salvini’s firebrand rhetoric against migrants and the European Union has lost much of its appeal.