Matteo Salvini

There is a wind of change blowing through the West. It emanates from Washington DC, where President Donald Trump continues to dash off executive orders; more than fifty by the end of last week, the highest number in a president’s first 100 days in four decades. The liberal mainstream media is rattled. The New York Times magazine ran a piece at the weekend in which it described Trump as "the leading light of a spate of illiberal leaders and parties flourishing in democracies around the world." The paper namechecked some of them: Poland, Holland, India, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and Russia. What unites and motivates these "illiberal" parties is their opposition to what the NYT called "liberal creep," which they regard as a civilizational threat.

Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party were swept into power in elections this weekend, a development that the media complex in America greeted with all the subtlety of a bird smacking into a sliding door. The New York Times managed to call her a “fascist” 28 times in a single article. Meloni stands to become Italy’s first female prime minister — but I suppose it’s only good for women to break glass ceilings if they’re the correct kind of women.

Since becoming leader six years ago Matteo Salvini — Il Capitano as they call him — has transformed the radical-right Lega from small regional separatist party into the largest party in Italy. After last week’s European elections, the Lega is now also the second largest national party in the European Parliament. Its 28 seats place it level with Angela Merkel’s CDU, and just behind the 29 seats of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. The European Parliament election results confirm Salvini as the undisputed leader of Europe’s populists. Their insurrection is determined to unseat the EU ancien régime. Its latest champion, French president Emmanuel Macron, is ever less convincing and popular in France and elsewhere in Europe.