Bto the side a road meandering through the Apuan Alps is the village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema. In 1944 ss Fascist troops and paramilitaries massacred several hundred people there, including children, to deter any collaboration with the resistance. In the Italian general elections on September 25, Stazzema, the municipality that includes Sant’Anna, helped elect a senator from the Brothers of Italy (FDI), a party that emerged from a post-war neo-fascist group. The FDIit is candidate obtained 49.6% of the vote.
Il Tirreno, the local daily, was indignant. Stazzema and the surrounding region of Tuscany had “set aside [their] memory,” he thundered. The historical significance of fascism had been lost in “a sea of indifference and populism”. Of the 36 lawmakers elected in Tuscany, which was once part of Italy’s communist “red belt”, 19 were from the nationally victorious right-wing alliance. Six belong to FDI, led by Giorgia Meloni, the probable next Italian Prime Minister. But do the results of the Italian elections really mean that she has reconnected with her fascist past?
The distribution of seats in the country’s parliament might suggest this. The right should occupy 237 of the 400 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 115 of the 200 in the Senate. Significantly, in both houses, the Brethren will outnumber all of their allies combined (see table).
But the right owes its victory not so much to popularity as to a skilful adaptation to the electoral system. In Italy, 37% of seats are allocated by first-past-the-post, which generously rewards alliances. And while Italy’s conservatives clung on, their opponents split.
The leader of the center-left Democratic Party (pd), Enrico Letta, ruled out any connection with the leftist Five Star Movement (m5s) because of his role in overthrowing the outgoing government of Mario Draghi. Carlo Calenda, founder of a small centrist party called Action, then broke an agreement with the pd and joined another small party, Italia Viva. The pd so ended up campaigning in a bloc with a handful of political minnows. Their alliance only won 26% of the national vote against 44% for the right. But together the centre-left, center and Five Stars gained 49%, which might have been enough to win if they had been united.
Instead, they committed electoral suicide. The effects were greatest in winner-takes-all ridings. With less than half of the vote, the right won more than three-quarters of the seats in the first-past-the-post system. Mr. Letta took the rap. The day after the election, he announced a pd congress at which, he said, he would not stand again. Stefano Bonaccini, governor of Emilia-Romagna, and Dario Nardella, mayor of Florence, are among the favorites to succeed him. There is also an intriguing outsider: Swiss Elly Schlein, Mr. Bonaccini’s deputy, who left the pd seven years ago and is now with the Greens.
The right-wing vote was a big step up from its 37% in the previous election in 2018. But the most important trend is one that has persisted for at least 10 years: the growing appetite of Italian conservatives for ever-present deals. more radical. Over the past five years, support for the Brothers has increased from 4% to 26%. Only some of those voters came from the also populist Northern League. Its share fell from 17% to 9%, a figure even lower than predicted by the polls. Some have suggested party leader Matteo Salvini should step down, including League great Roberto Maroni. But Mr Salvini seems deaf to suggestions that he could follow Mr Letta’s lead.
The vote for the populist right – the count of the League plus the Brothers – has risen in five years from 21% to 35%. Ms Meloni’s challenge will be to appease her constituents without dragging Italy into a showdown with Brussels or a debt crisis. Markets have so far greeted Italy’s likely new prime minister more amicably than Britain’s new leader, but that’s no reason for her to be complacent. ■
