Now that the legislature is ending, we must not forget how it began. If we rewind the tape to March 23, 2018, the puzzling situation will reappear of a political system articulated in three poles, none of which is able to reach a parliamentary majority nor willing to unite with others to form it, and yet able to make a hostile one to the euro and the European Union in the name of a sovereign and populist orientation.
The prelude to the legislature authorized far more disturbing hypotheses than we can see today. With the concrete affirmation of sovereignist guidelines, the argument that Italy is a member state of the Union “too big to fail” would have shown the rope in Brussels: an unbearable tension would have arisen between the democratically formed majority and membership of the Union.
This did not happen, nor were the divisions within the coalitions that respectively supported the Conte I, Conte II and Draghi governments stronger than those experienced in previous legislatures. This is partly due to the essentially media-oriented nature of our populism, based on gossip and badges (distributed precisely by deeply complicit media) rather than on a political capacity such as that which must be recognized, for example, in an Orban. This is partly due to the subsequent emergencies of the pandemic and war, which have often diverted the attention (at least) of governments to less ephemeral issues. And we owe a lot to a President of the Republic who knew how to use the powers at his disposal in the formation of the government in a masterly way, without forcing his hand and at the same time managing to find the right moment to propose the solution on each occasion. which to find sufficient convergence to reach the parliamentary majority.
The damage reduction was amazing. But you couldn’t go any further and you haven’t gone any further. And today social discontent is indeed widespread far beyond the groups on which the price of the crises that have piled up on each other in recent decades without ever being resolved has been unloaded. It is a fueled discontent, because it is thought that in the general confusion it is a good commodity that brings votes.
Most likely, if the situation doesn’t escalate further in the international arena, the show will offer this up until the election. With the addition of various positioning to the right, center and left: declarations of alliances and ruptures always aimed at moving some voters who are unlikely to be moved. Most likely the loss of votes, perhaps the collapse, of the populist and sovereignist parties will not benefit the others, but the abstentions. Which at this point would be more than justified.
The fact is that, by their own nature or more often because induced by the environment, the protagonists of the kindergarten we are talking about define themselves through exchanges of accusations against others and/or smoke signals in view of alliances. No one thinks of inverting the game: of indicating, in order to define themselves, four or five (no more) concrete and understandable choices on which to insist until the end of the electoral campaign, measuring the behavior of others from adherence to that position. So the opposite of what happens.
It will be said that this would no longer be a kindergarten. And maybe it won’t even be recommended by the increasingly sought-after communication gurus. Yet it would be a place where many voters would go to stay, if only to return to hope.