Italy

Thursday

Ben Schott

Diary – 3 January 2019

You’ll be relieved to learn my penguin is back. ‘How long was it gone?’ you ask. About six months. ‘And sorry, it’s a real penguin?’ Actually, no. Here’s the story: back in 2005, I was staying at the 60 Thompson Street Hotel in Manhattan. On my first afternoon in town I went for a stroll along Bleecker Street and popped into a shop called Leo Design where I spotted and purchased a charming bronze penguin — three inches high, and ounces heavy. Back in my room I placed Mr Penguin among my coins and keys, and thought little of him. The next afternoon, after housekeeping had visited, I spotted Mr

Thursday

Nicholas Farrell

The next Italian crisis

For those who believe in the European project, Brexit is a headache. Italy, on the other hand, is a bloody nightmare. Its new anti-elite populist coalition government of the alt-left Five Star Movement and the radical-right League is currently set on a collision course with the EU. This could easily start a chain reaction that destroys the single currency. The British media hardly mentioned it but on Saturday, once Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Commission president, had sent Theresa May on her way with a pat on the back, he sat down to ‘a working dinner’ with Giuseppe Conte, the Italian Prime Minister, to discuss Italy’s ‘unprecedented’ breach of EU rules on

Wednesday

Nicholas Farrell

The UN’s politically motivated search for human rights abuses in Italy

When politicians in Europe listen to the people and actually do something to stop uncontrolled immigration, the Holy See of the Global Crusade to Abolish Countries and the White Working Class – a.k.a the United Nations – sends in the thought police. This spring it happened in Britain when Tendayi Achiume, UN ‘Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance’, turned up to do a fortnight’s fieldwork in order to demonstrate what she had already decided: Britain, thanks to Brexit, is a human-rights emergency in the grip of surging racism. The war for the West is a war of words and such UN rapporteurs have

Saturday

Nicholas Farrell

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

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

Italy’s anti-immigration rhetoric is paying off for the populists

It wasn’t long ago when Italy used to be referred to colloquially as “the sick man of Europe,” a country whose economic situation was stuck in the doldrums, whose political system was always a crisis away from collapse, and whose political class was divided into those who were ineffectual and those who were corrupt. The Italians still have their systemic problems, no doubt. Italy has accumulated a pile of national debt (£2bn) that is larger than its GDP (£1.48 trillion). Its unemployment rate is over 10 per cent, higher than the EU’s collective average, and about three in ten young Italians can’t find work. And yet the “sick man of Europe” monicker is so

Thursday

Richard Madeley

Diary – 23 August 2018

Down here near Nice, you find most locals unsurprised by the catastrophic Genoa bridge collapse. The Italian border is only a few miles away but most people will find any excuse not to cross it — including my wife and me. In fact, these days we don’t go there at all. We haven’t done for years. Friends find this strange. After all, Italy’s closeness is one of the reasons we bought the place. So why do I fight shy of motoring through the long autostrada tunnel that runs under the pre-Alps, linking Menton to Ventimiglia? Because it’s bloody dangerous. Not on the scrupulously maintained French side, brightly lit with clearly

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

Has Donald Trump finally met a European leader he can work with?

Donald Trump has finally met a European leader he can stand for more than a moment: Italy’s bookish new premier, Giuseppe Conte. The former law professor, who was plucked out of obscurity by 5Star’s Luigi Di Maio and the League’s Matteo Salvini to be the nominal consensus pick of Rome’s anti-establishment government, is the kind of European Trump can do business with. Or at least that is Trump’s hope. For the brash billionaire, Europe has been nothing but a nuisance. Despite his proclamations of having a terrific relationship with Germany’s Angela Merkel and a kinship with France’s Emmanuel Macron, it is not difficult to see through the facade. Relations between

Thursday

The Spectator

Refugee lives matter

The photographs of children in cages at US migration centres, apparently separated from the parents with whom they illegally entered the country, do not reflect well on the Trump administration. Talking tough on migration helped the President to win the election but there is a difference between building a wall and carrying out a policy which appears to use cruelty as a shock tactic. Yet there is a policy towards migrants that is ultimately far crueller, and which is being pursued beneath our noses in Europe. That is to tempt migrants into unseaworthy boats to cross the Mediterranean. Last year, according to the International Organisation for Migration, 3,116 people died

Wednesday

Nicholas Farrell

Matteo Salvini’s tough immigration stance is paying off

Well, stone me. A new “populist” government in Italy actually does something to stop the NGO taxi service which ferries migrants masquerading as refugees from the Libyan coast to Sicily 350 miles away. It does what no Italian government has dared do before and refuses to allow an NGO ship with hundreds of migrants on board, nearly all men from sub-Saharan Africa, or men pretending to be boys, to dock in Italy. And it says it will block all NGO migrant ships in the future. Europe’s liberal imperialists are duly appalled at what the deplorable populists now in charge of the EU’s fourth largest economy have done. Whether left-wing multiculturalists or right-wing global

Thursday

Nicholas Farrell

Matteo Salvini’s decision to turn away a migrant rescue ship is an historic moment

The refusal by Italy’s new ‘populist’ coalition government of the alt-left Five Star Movement and the hard right Lega to allow an NGO vessel with 629 African migrants on board to dock in Italy is an historic moment. The leader of the Lega Matteo Salvini, now Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, is determined to fulfil his campaign pledge. That is to say: I will stop any more migrants being ferried to Italy by sea from Libya and I will deport all of the 500,000 illegal migrants already arrived from Libya by sea who are not refugees – i.e the lot. Since the first government in western Europe of what

Monday

Nicholas Farrell

Matteo Salvini’s decision to turn away a migrant rescue ship is an historic moment | 11 June 2018

The refusal by Italy’s new ‘populist’ coalition government of the alt-left Five Star Movement and the hard right Lega to allow an NGO vessel with 629 African migrants on board to dock in Italy is an historic moment. The leader of the Lega Matteo Salvini, now Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, is determined to fulfil his campaign pledge. That is to say: I will stop any more migrants being ferried to Italy by sea from Libya and I will deport all of the 500,000 illegal migrants already arrived from Libya by sea who are not refugees – i.e the lot. Since the first government in western Europe of what

Saturday

Charles Moore

Italy’s populists have won – but they’re still not in charge

Recently, the ‘populist’ (i.e. electorally victorious) new government of Italy wanted to appoint an anti-euro finance minister and was told by the President of the Republic that it couldn’t. This caused outrage in Italy, and it made rational people here assume that there would have to be new elections, or the impeachment of the president. In fact, however, both sides have won, or at least lived to fight another day. Professor Savona is not to be finance minister, but Europe minister instead, and the populists are still in charge, yet not in charge. This should not be surprising if one remembers Professor Savona’s own dictum that the euro is ‘a

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 7 June 2018

A distinguished retired EU diplomat from a small EU member state sends me a thoughtful letter. He complains that Brexit ‘has been handled in the most amateurish way by British politicians’. ‘When one removes something,’ he goes on, ‘one has to be ready with its replacement’: Mrs May ‘is far from clear in her plans, but those who criticise her are not any clearer’. All this is true, and it points to the weirdness of our current situation, which is that Brexit is not being executed by a government that wants it. In conversation, people often say ‘The Brexit supporters promised X’, and then accuse them of breaking that promise.

Stephen K. Bannon

Europe’s new democracy

By 25 May the world was learning of the Italian populist parties’ plans to form a coalition government. This would ditch the ideological divide of left vs right while unifying the country’s north and south and its populists and the nationalists against a long history of technocratic governments and European Central Bank demands. Over the next 48 hours, a combination of foreign politicians, foreign capital and foreign media descended upon Italy to demand the Italian people’s choices in voting for the right-wing League and the left-wing Five Star parties were dismissed. And indeed they were dismissed. The Financial Times called the coalition ‘the modern barbarians’, while the German press called

Wednesday

Matthew Lynn

Italy isn’t the next Greece. Here’s why | 6 June 2018

Everyone thinks they know the script of how Italy’s saga will play out. As the populists take power in Rome, they will rail against Brussels, try to fight austerity, come up with some bold plans for reforming the euro, and hold a referendum or two. And then they will meekly cave in as Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank, the euro-zone’s equivalent of Gordon Brown’s ‘big clunking fist’ from a decade ago, bring them to heel. After all, that’s what happened in Greece when Syriza took power. A lot of fighting talk was followed by a dismal surrender, and five years of budget cuts, tax rises, and unending recession.

Friday

James Forsyth

Will Italy’s first fight with Brussels be over immigration?

Italy has a new Prime Minister: Giuseppe Conte, who heads up a Five Star / Lega coalition. He presented his list of ministers to President Mattarella this morning and, with the Eurosceptic economist Paolo Savona moved from Finance to European affairs, it was accepted. The way is now paved for this Five Star / Lega coalition to start governing. President Mattarella has succeeded in preventing Savona’s appointment as Finance Minister without collapsing the whole government, which must be considered a success for him. But his victory is not total. Savona is still in the government and will be able to cause plenty of trouble from his role as Europe minister.

Thursday

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: the people vs the EU

This week, the new Italian coalition’s proposed government was blocked by the Italian President, giving EU grandees in Brussels a cause for celebration. But is the EU way too controlling of rebellious member states? On the home front, would a Eurozone crisis help or hinder Brexit negotiations? We ask Nigel Farage. And last, is Mueller’s special investigation into potential Russo-Trump collusion going anywhere? First, Brussels has got a problem. Across Europe, populist politicians are winning elections on Eurosceptic platforms. Douglas Murray argues in this week’s cover piece that even though the public has spoken, Brussels just can’t handle democracy when elections don’t go their way. That’s why, he writes, Italy’s

Wednesday

Matthew Lynn

Don’t blame the populists for Italy’s chaos

Bond yields are soaring. Stock markets are tanking. The banks are looking wobbly, and money is starting to drain out of Italy. To listen to the mainstream commentary on the Italian crisis part 782, you’d imagine that a wild and irresponsible ‘populist’ government had just been tamed by the financial markets. And that once some sensible suits backed by the IMF and the EU take back control in Rome order would be restored and everything will be back to normal. The trouble is, that is not quite the whole story. In fact, the markets have already worked out that Italy is leaving the euro, at least in its present form.

Monday

Henry Newman

Will the next Italian elections be a referendum on democracy?

Is Italy descending into political chaos? Some may shrug their shoulders and say well, it is Italy. Yes, Italy has had messy politics before. But that doesn’t make the current row any less high stakes. We don’t yet know if the League backs the demands of the Five Star – and the small Brothers of Italy party – to impeach the President. If they do then there will be a majority in both houses. The Five Star and the League are also calling for fresh elections – but could a president dissolve parliament while facing impeachment demands? Meanwhile the President has put forward a new figure as Prime Minister, who

Nicholas Farrell

Why Italy’s new populist government collapsed before it even began

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