Sounds like a bad joke. 50 percent of Italians vote for an open country, open to minorities, open to Europe and the world. Vote for lists that respect LGBT + rights and want to strengthen them, that do not react hostile to migration but want to grant citizenship to the children of immigrants who grew up in Italy, who want to see Italy solidly anchored in Europe and aim at strengthening the Union European.
The other field must instead settle for 44 percent: the field in which two parties of the populist right dominate with their reactionary agenda that does not foresee spaces for minorities, for refugees and migrants presented as a threat and that’s it, for a Europe. increasingly integrated, in which there is not even room for a decisive response to the climate crisis. Only the two imperatives “god, country, family” and “Italians first!” Count.
But – and here we come to the bad joke – that minority – all too strong but still a minority – will now command in Italy thanks to the fact that it will be able to count on a large majority of about 60 percent of the seats in parliament. He will have the government and we will most likely see Giorgia Meloni as prime minister: Giorgia Meloni who has never made a clean break with the past of fascism, who sees April 25 not as a celebration of liberation from Nazis and fascists but as a “party divisive “.
Without an alternative plan
It is a disaster for which the forces of the center-left bear the responsibility, a disaster that is also perfectly predictable, we could also say: a collective political suicide committed with open eyes. Usually only success has many fathers, but in this case we must say that failure has multiple paternity. A glance at the electoral law was enough: a divided field has no chance if the other field is united.
And to say that the Democratic Party (Pd) since 2019 aimed at the creation of the “wide field” of all parties opposed to the populist right. But when the 5-star Movement (M5s) broke away from Mario Draghi’s government, the secretary of the Democratic Party Enrico Letta buried the large field overnight. However, he lacked an alternative plan and his attempt to transform the elections, with the slogan “either us or them”, into a duel between him and Meloni, between the Democratic Party and the Brothers of Italy, failed miserably. With 19 per cent, the Democratic Party took home a poor result, substantially equal to the Renzian disaster of 2018.
Instead, they had a plan b Giuseppe Conte and the cinquestelle: stop the definitive decline of the M5s, “primum vive” as Bettino Craxi said in 1976 referring to the Socialist Party. At an unexpected 15 percent, that calculation was crowned with success, a success that cost the price of paving the way for the right to triumph.
Matteo Renzi and Carlo Calenda also had a plan b with their Macronian-inspired “third pole”. They dreamed of destroying the cinquestelle and weakening the Democratic Party, they dreamed of becoming the tip of the balance in a parliament without solid majorities and of bringing Mario Draghi back to Palazzo Chigi. This project failed miserably; it did not take knowledge of high mathematics to understand how far it was from reality.
The damage not only affects the center-left camp, but Italy, at least that Italy open to the world that can count on the majority of citizens. They will have to deal with a reactionary government that does not look to the future but to an imaginary past. And Europe too must prepare for the fact that in the coming years Italy will no longer be an engine of integration. It is no coincidence that the first telegrams for Meloni were signed by the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, the German Alternative für Deutschland, the French Marine Le Pen and the Spaniards of Vox.