Italy

Five Star play the race card

After last November’s referendum rejection of Renzi’s constitutional amendment, the populist Five Star Movement has come to lead Italy’s opinion polls. A few weeks before Easter the movement’s leader in Parliament, Luigi Di Maio, denounced what he called the “taxis in the Mediterranean ferrying refugees to Italy”, meaning the non-governmental humanitarian ships who have saved the lives of many desperate people. Di Maio claimed cynically that his “only wish is to save the good name of those virtuous NGOs and save lives”. His remarks were, however, aimed at winning people from the Lega Nord...

Italy: a shift in the political centre

At its recent conference Italy’s governing party, il Partito Democratico (PD), split. This follows a massive defeat in the December 2016 referendum for party leader and head of government Matteo Renzi. Defeat and a subsequent resignation as premier did not stop Renzi from deciding to remain as leader of the party. And at the party convention he gave no quarter to his opponents — representing a diffuse spectrum of left /liberal forces. He declared for a general election in June, reiterating the need for him to keep hold of the power of the party leader so as to control the selection of...

Will Italy shift right in an election?

The world’s leading financial media has recently sharply turned their attention to the critical consequences of Italy’s constitutional referendum on 4 December. What stirs these experts is the significance of the vote for the country’s notoriously precarious banking system and the effect of a rejection — the no vote is 5-7 points ahead in the polls — for political stability in Europe. Prime Minister Renzi wants to transform the elective Italian Senate into an apparatus of the ruling party or the government, composed of 100 senators, selectively picked from Mayors and councillors from the...

Resist Trump surge and Brexit

It is conceivable that within a year or so there will be no European Union, or not much of an EU, for Britain to quit. In Italy, Salvini’s right-wing nationalist and anti-immigrant Lega Nord may be able to seize the initiative after the likely defeat on 4 December of prime minister Matteo Renzi in Renzi’s referendum on increased executive powers. Or it may be the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, who has tacked left sometimes but who greeted Trump’s election with right-wing bombast. Trump, Grillo said, had defeated the “journalists and intellectuals of the system, serving the big powers...

Refugee deaths hit record

According to the latest UNHCR report, 2016 has seen the largest number of refugee deaths in the Mediterranean — almost 3,800 so far. Last year, the figure was 3,771 for the whole year. While the walls and barbed wire fences of Europe and the cynical deal with Turkey to “house” refugees have resulted in a significant fall in the numbers attempting the Mediterranean crossing, the numbers of deaths has risen! It was one death among every 269 people crossing last year. It is now one death for every 88 people. For those heading to Italy, one person dies for every 47 arrivals. With regard to Italy...

The end of Renzi?

As Italy’s premier Matteo Renzi and a clutch of his cronies were admitted by Obama to his final White House “do”, the substance behind the faux-carnival jollity was obvious — concern for the survival of Renzi’s government, and fears about how its fall could hit European and global financial and economic stability. In the constitutional referendum promoted by Renzi and to be held on 4 December, the polls show yes and no neck-and-neck. Yet Renzi declared when he launched the referendum that he would resign if defeated. In September, the American Ambassador unequivocally declared his government’s...

Labour needs new policy of solidarity with migrants

Jeremy Corbyn has said he will defend freedom of movement in the negotiations around Brexit. He has declared: “I have visited the camps in Calais and Dunkirk, which are in an appalling state. Those people are in a very perilous situation. They are all humans, to whom we must reach out the hand of friendship and support”. He has called for Britain to admit more refugees. By contrast, the legacy of the 1997-2010 New Labour Government, of which Owen Smith aspires to be the successor, was seven Acts of Parliament restricting civil liberties on the pretext of fighting terrorism; six on immigration...

5 Star Movement heading for power?

In the first round of Italy’s municipal elections (early June) the governing Democratic Party of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi suffered big setbacks. This was the case in both the metropolitan heartlands of the north and centre and across the whole of the south. In 24 of the biggest towns and cities it lost upwards of 300,000 votes. Over the weekend of 25-26 June in second round ballots in around 120 places, the Democratic Party was routed. This included the country’s key cities — Rome, Torino, Milan Bologna, Napoli, Trieste. In Torino and Rome the victors were from Grillo’s populist Five Star...

Alessandro: The Black Prince of Florence

Cath Fletcher's book about Alessandro de' Medici, the bastard son of a Duke and a servant, or possibly slave, of a black African background, is a work of historical detection. The text weighs up the often contradictory, dishonest and sparse accounts of Alessandro's life. Sometimes the only information about moments in his life comes from household inventories, lists of fine clothes, or letters of thanks for elaborate gifts. But such are the records that must be used to track Alessandro's installation as the Duke of Florence in 1532, only to be assassinated less than five years later by a...

Demand for truth in Giulo Regini case sparks protests

As the father of Italian student Giulio Regeni, murdered while researching trade unions in Egypt, said: "Giulio was a citizen of the world, and he didn't only live to study, he enjoyed himself. And here they are, the generation without limits and without borders, those for whom every place in this world is a kind of home, ready to demand the truth for Giulio". Two months after his murder, Italy this week awaits the arrival of the most senior Egyptian investigators who , it is claimed, will consign an exhaustively researched dossier on the death of Regeni into the hands of Rome's leading public...

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