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That talks have now collapsed hardly dissipates the danger. On the contrary, the very fact that these populisms have struck hard at the constitutional powers of the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, shows how determined they are to upend the country’s institutional setup. With new elections, probably in the autumn, the populists are likely to emerge even stronger. But for now Italy is set to be led by a transition government – with no majority.
Both populisms raked up support with Europhobic slogans and concepts of a revolt of “the people” against the “elites” – all in the name of an imaginary “direct democracy”. One is the Five Star movement, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo alongside a prophet of web-based democracy, Roberto Casaleggio. The other is Matteo Salvini’s League – no longer a secessionist party of the north but a far-right party that expresses sympathy for the regimes in Russia and North Korea.
They predict an apocalyptic future for a public already frightened of globalisation and impoverished by European austerity policies. These are powerful, aggressive forces that have appeared throughout Europe – but are now, for the first time, ready to call the shots in a country that was a founding member of the European Union and has always been firmly anchored in multilateral and transatlantic alliances.
This Italian “double populism” will not renounce its programme, which aims to control the government through a sort of politburo known as the “conciliation committee”, placed wholly under the control of Five Star and the League.
It aims to neutralise parliament by making it impossible for lawmakers to switch parties – whereas the freedom of MPs to do so is written into the constitution. Unpopular laws would be submitted to a sort of screening by referendum; the same would apply to international treaties, and therefore to all the steps that Italy has taken to be part of the EU and the eurozone – even though backtracking on treaties is forbidden by article 75 of the constitution.
