Nicholas Farrell

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new ‘far right’ mission to lock up asylum seekers in distant countries yesterday suffered an embarrassing setback on live television. The former human rights supremo – who cancelled the Tory Rwanda scheme on day one in office – was in Tirana, less than one year later, to discuss setting up a similar scheme in Albania. Or so the media were led to believe in press briefings beforehand: that it would be a main item on the agenda at his bilateral meeting with Albania’s socialist Prime Minister Edi Rami. Italy’s conservative Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, has already launched such a scheme in Albania.

Giorgia Meloni has confounded her critics yet again as she proves herself to be the most important leader in the European Union. She has shown in the past two days that she is the vital bridge between America and Europe. As a result, Italy looks set to play a major role on the world stage which it has never done before since the founding of the Italian Republic in 1948 after the defeat of Mussolini’s fascist regime. In Washington on Thursday, where Meloni met Donald Trump for a bilateral summit, she achieved a major breakthrough when the US President accepted her invitation to come to Rome ‘to meet Europe’ about tariffs. The meeting will take place ‘in the very near future’, according to a joint press statement issued later.

Dante's Beach, Ravenna On the final day of their state visit to Italy the King and Queen were in Ravenna to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the area in 1945 by the British Eighth Army. What they probably did not realise is that Ravenna is a left-wing stronghold in a region – the Romagna – which was the birthplace of Italian revolutionary socialism at the end of the 19th century. Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist before he invented fascism, was born elsewhere in the region. From 1945, Ravenna, like everywhere else in red Romagna, was run by the Italian communist party – the PCI – until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and is still run by their direct descendants. The PCI was the largest communist party outside the Soviet Bloc in Europe.

Written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa at the end of his life in the late 1950s, it is a novel about the collapse – one century beforehand as a result of the reunification of Italy – of the Sicilian aristocracy of which his family was a part, and its replacement with what was called democracy. It also explains, oddly perhaps, the rise of the Sicilian Mafia without once even mentioning the word ‘Mafia’. Il Gattopardo – actually the word means ‘serval’, not ‘leopard’ – so named after the small wild cat on the family's coat of arms - was the only book Tomasi, Prince of Salina, ever wrote. He failed to find a publisher while he was alive. Mondadori and Einaudi both turned it down.

As a biographer of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and thus possessed of a certain expertise in the matter I want to add my thoughts about Elon Musk’s bizarre raised right arm salute. Many on the left, including historians who ought to know better, say that the gesture delivered with such passion at the rally in Washington for the party faithful after Trump’s inauguration was a fascist or Nazi salute.  If Musk had made such a gesture in front of the Duce, he would have been instantly banished to the beautiful Tremiti Islands off the coast of Puglia along with the gays But not just on the left.

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna Italian police have arrested 12 alleged terrorists who are accused of plotting a Day of the Jackal style sniper assassination of Giorgia Meloni. Many more remain under formal investigation. According to investigators, the plotters aimed to install the sniper in a room in the Albergo Nazionale, opposite the Italian Camera dei Deputati (House of Commons) in Rome. Given that much of the global media continues to call Italy’s first female prime minister 'far' or 'hard' right, and 'the heir to Mussolini', you might assume that those arrested are far-left radicals. But you could not be more mistaken. They are fascists.

Few have noticed yet but Giorgia Meloni looks set to become Donald Trump’s key point of contact in Europe – above all thanks to her close friendship with Elon Musk. The relationship between Trump and Meloni, via Musk, could become very special indeed. In particular, it may prove crucial for what happens in Ukraine. They may not be in love with each other but Musk and Meloni are in love with each other’s ideas The tech tycoon backed Trump’s election campaign with an estimated £100 million, plus his vital vocal support on X. He’s now become a top consigliere to the President-elect and has been appointed as the head of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut government waste.