THE BUNTINGS ARE DOWN

THE BUNTINGS ARE DOWN

Why Italian recent elections were a defining moment – and why the impact could be far more or far less than advertised. And yes, the title phrase is filched off Blackadder.

The recent Italian elections have provided any number of controversial points. I already covered the misunderstanding in the International press on how we entered the political crisis and ended up calling a snap election with an electoral law which was fated to give a huge majority premium, but even the date picked for the venue had an ironic twist: September 25^th was the last available weekend before the electricity regulator fixed the new tariffs for the quarter. The global press, taking the hint from the date and from Authorities keeping their “stay calm” stance in the face of horrible data points, kept from pointing that out until polls were closed. After all, Meloni had enough wind in her sails already without that bit of help.

So, without further ado, this was the outcome: 

 

This is of course a “Bed of Procustes”: hidden under the juicy and simplistic conclusion that an electoral law which prizes clear majorities gave a victory to the more cohesive Right, also thanks to an electorate which gave a great result to the ONLY party which was outside the Draghi government, while in reality Italy remains left leaning, there are tears in the fabric that have to be explained, both in terms of ideological bent and in terms of inner workings of the two (or more) factions.

Of course, while I may have plausible explanations, these remain mine and on top of that raise more questions than answers.

1. Draghi: now you see it, now you don't

Mario Draghi, who started the crisis by resigning in the face of limited support by Movimento 5 Stelle, was and is universally defined as one of the most liked Prime Ministers ever. In reality, while that is emphatically true in inner city elites and in the bureaucratic aristocracy whence he came, these elections haven't conclusively proven that those opinion polls turned into real votes. He has been during his long tenure at the ECB a strong supporter of public intervention in the economy, to the extent that one of my lenses on reality has been that HE has been the real leader of PD throughout the decade, admittedly helped by the nominal leaders being either too flamboyant (Renzi) or rather drab (Gentiloni, Letta). I don't know if anyone from the foreign press corp listening to Letta's “eye of the tiger” saw the difference between the person and the quip, but given the framing that Draghi gave his public speeches, I found it gave more accurate results to listen to Draghi than to the political figures supporting him from inside the center left parties.

Draghi duly gave himself a wide latitude in interpreting what a caretaker government can do. In Italy, the sitting government decrees what its powers will be in the interregnum, provided that the President of the Republic signs off. And Draghi's government when it fell had just WON the 56^th confidence vote in parliament. Confidence votes in the original design were subject to strict limitations, which have been in practice waived all along. We'll see what role if any he will adopt after the new government comes into full powers, but he has given strong hints about wanting to occupy Mattarella's seat as president of the republic in the days leading to his unsurprising re-election. There are sound reasons why Mattarella's factions would not be greatly amenable to such a solution, but hey, this is Italy, and as Morpheus said about rules, “Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken.”

2. Binary stars: why the left looks stronger than it really is.

What of the Left, representing more than 50% of the votes cast?

Well... I don't want to rain on any politician's parade (after all I am their servant), but those numbers, while incontrovertibly true, are not as meaningful as many think, and above all as during the forthcoming parliament will be aired time and again. If there was an index of “number of international media posts about the left in Italy winning if they joined in a snap election”, I'd buy long dated calls on it.

The problem being that, I think that it's wrong.

During this albeit abbreviated election cycle, there have been all sorts of “Liaisons dangereuses” between all left wing parties, including obviously the misrepresented “terzo polo” with Calenda and Renzi. In reality, no one with the least bit of sense took “third” in the sense that they could, at a pinch, support a mirror image of the Draghi government, but this time anchored on the RIGHT. Both would emigrate to Canada before agreeing to form a coalition with either Lega or Fratelli d'Italia, not even if the Vogon were coming. That kept them in a subordinate role to the ONLY winner of this election: Movimento 5 stelle.

Yes, that unruly band of people much unappreciated by the elites (and with good reasons, I might add), pulled a veritable rabbit out of its hat. By returning to their populist protest roots, especially in the South, they garnered enough votes by taking them off the leftish pool to ensure that not only Partito Democratico wasn't able to be the biggest single party by votes, but that it got less than 20%. Since 15% going upwards is much of a muchness with less than 20% going downwards, Italy now has TWO parties occupying the same political spectrum. Who thought superimposition of states was possible only in Quantum Physics? The trouble is that, while PD and M5S formed a government before the advent of Draghi, at the behest of Mattarella who didn't want elections if they could be avoided, neither that experience nor the cohabitation under Draghi has improved relations. On top of that, the movement has understood something that any sane person could have told them before they threw in their lot with Salvini in 2018: If you are a “protest movement”, not only you should stick to what you do best, yell in the town squares, but you attract the kind of people who should be best kept from being asked “and what would you have me do?”.

So, M5S know that if they fall to the siren song of “let's join a left wing coalition”, they stand to lose many more votes than ALL their eventual brethren combined, mostly to abstention. Hence, simply adding up numbers doesn't work, not even as a threat in parliament.

That's where my “binary stars” image comes from: PD and M5S are now each their own “party”, but they are both rotating around each other and vying for a center of gravity which is OUTSIDE each of them, and where none would be comfortable. Now, this will be masked by the fact that the farther they are from having a chance at power, the less the centrifugal forces are, but a merger or strict coalition would be as uneventful as two stars collapsing into one. Not something you want to look up close.

3. Meloni, the mistery

So, what of the apparent winner, even if the prize is inheriting a total unadulterated mess?

Well, The prospective Premier is playing her cards wisely close to her chest. Of course it is premature to pass any judgement, and she has been adamant that she has not received any official word from the Quirinale or that any list of names of minister running around has any kind of official seal. Yet, early on she onboarded people like Carlo Nordio, Terzi di Sant'Agata, very respectable and wise people who would have shunned a call from just anybody. More rumors of people I respect have been making the rounds, so … fingers crossed. The situation she inherits is far from simple.

That is all for now, but we will have more news when (and if) a new government is formed.