Nicholas Farrell

Ravenna, Italy Ever since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, it’s been widely assumed that Europe’s right-wing populists are finished. Figures such as Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orban have all been cast as Putin’s useful idiots – defending his nefarious deeds because they saw him as a vital ideological ally. Now that Putin’s

Everyone is calling the conflict in Ukraine Putin’s war and insisting that it has nothing to do with the Russians themselves. The nightmare would end – they tell us – if only Vladimir Putin were to disappear in a coup. They used to say the same thing not only about Adolf Hitler but also Benito

While most European countries, especially Britain, are relaxing their Covid restrictions, Italy which has the toughest of the lot, this week made them tougher still – even though the data shows they are futile. Perhaps it is because Italy is a country where fortune tellers and faith healers are a multi-billion pound industry that it

Ah, those Italians! Italy’s parliament spent last week trying and failing to elect a new president in seven secret ballots. Then, in the eighth ballot on Saturday evening, by a huge majority it re-elected the old one – Sergio Mattarella – against his will. Mattarella, 80, formerly of the post-communist Partito Democratico (PD) and now an

In ancient Rome, a diviner called a haruspex would observe the entrails of sacrificed sheep and poultry, especially their livers, to deduce the will of the gods. But even the finest haruspex would have a hard time deducing the will of the 951 parliamentarians and 58 regional delegates – the so-called grandi elettori – whose

Silvio ‘Bunga Bunga’ Berlusconi was a populist before the word became all the rage. An almost comically divisive figure, he makes spectacular off-the-cuff remarks which thrill his supporters and leave his enemies apoplectic. He called Barack Obama ‘tanned’. He advised a teenage girl that her best bet in life was to ‘marry a rich man’,

If you were asked to think of a perfect fascist, never in a month of Sundays would you suggest Bilbo Baggins of Bag End. Hobbits such as he, after all, grow no more than four feet tall and have slightly pointed ears and a round jovial face. Their feet have leathery soles and are covered with brown

Britain’s newspapers have called the results of the local elections in Italy the death of populism. The Times, for example, grandly proclaims that the Italian elections this week ‘appear to have brought down the curtain on an experiment in anti-establishment politics that inspired populist movements around the world.’ The Guardian, meanwhile, wonders joyfully if what

In early August, Italy banned the unvaccinated from most forms of social life, then most forms of travel and now most forms of work. The unvaccinated are pariahs. Yet unlike in France, say, where hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest against compulsory vaccine passports, in Italy hardly anyone has protested against ‘Il

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna Here is your starter for ten. Which Italian political party believes that individual liberty is sacred? Answer: the party invariably defined by the international media as ‘far right’ or ‘fascist’ and jointly Italy’s most popular party in the opinion polls: in other words, the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy). Here in Italy,

The world these days is so blasè about the destruction of democracy that no one even thinks it worthy of comment that an important free country such as Italy has not had an elected prime minister since the last one, Silvio Berlusconi, was forced to resign in 2011 during the Eurozone crisis after a palace