The people vs the EU

This week the EU revealed its true nature. Rather than hand power to a Eurosceptic, the Italian President Sergio Mattarella defied the democratic process, and the wishes of most Italians, and put a puppet in place. Once again a major European democracy has seen the results of a legitimate vote dismissed; swept aside because the EU can’t countenance dissent. It’s hard not to conclude that those who voted Leave in our own referendum so as to ‘take back control’ had a point. The governing elite in Europe simply can’t afford to relinquish control. They can’t let real people have a real say in who leads them because the grand EU project matters above all.

In Italy, in March, the people went to the polls and were deemed to have returned the wrong verdict. Since then the main winners have been trying to put together a governing coalition. As they come from unfathomably different political directions this was always going to be a challenge. And yet last week Five Star and the League managed to agree on some framework priorities for a coalition government.

All seemed to be going swimmingly by Italy’s political standards. The parties even agreed on an unknown academic called Giuseppe Conte (lets call him ‘Professor A’) becoming the new Prime Minister.

Yet although Mattarella (who has the right to approve the government) seemed content with someone who has no experience of politics becoming Prime Minister, he drew the line at the coalition’s proposal for Italy’s new finance minister for the simple reason that he had not, in the past, shown enough support for the EU and the eurozone. Worse, 81-year-old professor Paolo Savona (let’s call him Professor B’) had expressed concerns about the whole project of monetary union, even floating the idea that at some stage Italy (where unemployment now blights the lives of a third of young people) might need to find a means of exiting the currency.