Italy’s new populist government – the first in western Europe – collapsed last night before it even had the chance to govern for a single day. Italy, the Eurozone’s third largest economy and the beating pulse of European civilisation, now finds itself in a constitutional crisis as grave as any of the many it has had to confront since the fall of fascism in 1945. The way this thing pans out in the next days and weeks will effect the future not just of Italy but of Europe. And indirectly also of Britain with Brexit.
The two Italian populist parties which were on the verge of forming a government that may never now happen won a majority of votes at the 4th March elections. But who has more power? The people who voted for populism – or the elites who have now shot down populism? We shall see.
Pressure from the Germans, the French, the markets, Brussels, etc spoke with what Italians call the tongue of the astuta serpente (the astute snake) against this nascent Italian populist government as – in the words of the FT’s editorial headline on the matter: ‘Rome opens its Gates to the Modern Barbarians’.
The populist coalition’s plans to hike public expenditure and slash taxes and sod austerity and if necessary – in the name of the popolo – to break EU rules on fiscal continence and maybe even abandon the single currency itself prompted the German press in particular to become hysterical and accuse the Italians of being ‘scroungers’ and ‘clowns’ and worse even than beggars because ‘at least a beggar says thank you’ – and of wanting to cause a ‘horror show’ for the EU.
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