Italy

To judge from what is going on in Italy, the only major European country where populists are in power, right-wing populism works but left-wing populism does not. The senior partner in Italy's populist coalition government – the alt-left Five Star Movement – is haemorrhaging support, while the popularity of the junior partner – the radical-right League – soars ever higher. In regional elections in Sardinia last Sunday, Five Star got just 11 per cent of the vote compared to the 42 per cent it got on the island at Italy's general election in March 2018. The League's candidate, by contrast, at the head of a right-wing coalition, won with 47 per cent. This catastrophic result for Five Star comes two weeks after a similar rout in regional elections in Abruzzo.

Two weeks ago Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s vice-premier and Labour Minister and the top politician of the Five Star Movement (M5S), appointed a new commissioner for the UN cultural organisation Unesco. He chose the dog--whistling, bum-slapping sex--comedy actor Lino Banfi, star of How to Seduce Your Teacher, Policewoman on the Porno Squad and other films. The M5S was launched online by the 1980s comedian Beppe Grillo. It is run on the basis of a private computer operating system called Rousseau. Most Italians look at the M5S as either a breath of fresh air, a necessary gesture of defiance, or a ridiculous episode that will pass. But you need a sense of humour for that. French President Emmanuel Macron has lately shown himself unable to take the Italian government in his stride.

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, is one of the most controversial politicians in Europe. The 45-year old chief of the League party exudes a down-to-earth demeanour with his common-man social media posts, in which he shares pictures of himself eating Barilla pasta and Nutella. To his many opponents, Salvini is a thick-headed, semi-fascist ideologue who wants to turn back the clock and return Europe to a dangerous form of nationalism. But to his supporters, in and out of Italy, he is a straight-talking, no-nonsense defender of his country's sovereignty against the northern elites in Berlin and Brussels.

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 its budget.

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.

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.

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 are popularly known as populists was installed in Italy 10 days ago, Salvini has talked about nothing else but the migrant crisis.

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.