Matteo Salvini is lucky to be the enemy of the Italian justice system

As Machiavelli noted: in order to prevail, a successful prince needs Fortuna as well as Virtù. Matteo Salvini, who has replaced Silvio Berlusconi as Italy’s dominant politician, has got them both.

In any normal country, it would surely be unthinkable that the deputy leader of a new government elected specifically to stop refugees being ferried across the Mediterranean from North Africa to his country should face trial for actually doing so.

But as the Italians themselves are the first to admit: ‘Italy is not un Paese normale (a normal country)’. Its judicial system, for example – they know from bitter experience – is incompetent, arbitrary and politicised, and widely regarded not just as the enemy of the people but of justice itself.

And so, little more than two months after Salvini and his party – the radical right Lega – formed a coalition government with the alt-left Five Star Movement – prosecuting magistrates in Agrigento, Sicily, have placed him under formal investigation for kidnapping migrants (maximum sentence: 30 years in jail).