Javier Milei is popular, despite Argentina’s protests

A glimpse into the mindset of Javier Milei was given by his decision this week to retweet a picture on social media depicting himself, prophet-like, gazing down from the clouds. As his flight to Italy for the G7 summit took off he would have been feeling rather smug – he had finally secured a long-awaited win back home in Argentina.

His monumental ‘Bases Law’ – which has been the subject of months of fevered debate and frantic toing and froing – has been passed ‘in general’, a major step towards its safe passage into the statutes’ book. It will give him wide powers to implement the ‘shock therapy’ he promised to administer during his bombastic presidential campaign. No president in the post-dictatorship history of South America’s second-largest economy has gone longer without passing a law – and supporters had feared that failure to secure this bill’s passing could have signalled the death-knell for his government.