National conservative Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni is set to become the first elected, rather than appointed, Prime Minister of Italy in well over a decade following a series of technocrat and otherwise imposed Prime Ministers leading unstable and untenable coalitions.
Giorgia Meloni will be the first party leader to win a national election and then become Prime Minister as a consequence of that vote since Silvio Berlusconi and his centre-right coalition won a majority in 2008 following a snap election after the fall of “caretaker” Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s technocratic government in January of that year.
The 2008 government, which was the fourth Italian government led by Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-serving Prime Minister ever, also involved Ms Meloni who was appointed as Minister for Youth, somewhat appropriately also being the youngest ever government minister since Italy united in the 19th century.
However, the Berlusconi IV cabinet would not last a full five-year term and was deposed in 2011 following a number of MPs crossing the floor over growing economic concerns and a debt crisis that led to Berlusconi losing his majority and resigning as leader of the government.
Meloni Alliance Projected to Win Outright Majority Following Historic Election https://t.co/zwvBJw6QPc
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 26, 2022
Berlusconi’s replacement, economist and former European Commission member Mario Monti, was largely seen as being imposed by the European Union and other outside forces that demanded Italy implement economic austerity measures in order to deal with the debt crisis that was ongoing at the time. The selection of Monti would not be the first or last time the European Union would seek to influence the domestic politics of Italy.
Monti’s government, which was formed entirely of independent technocrats without political party affiliation, lasted just 18 months until the next Italian election in the spring of 2013, where no clear winner emerged to form a government between the centre-left Italy Common Good coalition and Berlusconi’s Centre-Right who both achieved around 30 per cent of the vote.
Neither Italy Common Good leader Pier Luigi Bersani nor Silvio Berlusconi would become Prime Minister, with Democratic Party member Enrico Letta, the now ex-leader of the Democratic Party, presiding over the grand coalition between the two blocs after being appointed Prime Minister by then-President Georgio Napolitano.
Giorgia Meloni is Italy's new PM. She is dedicated to traditional family values, opposes gender ideology and the LGBT lobby, backs strong borders and seeks an end to unlimited mass migration. Fantastica!https://t.co/AbuimpGuOh
— Simon Kent (@sunsimonkent) September 26, 2022
Letta’s premiership would last less than a year, just 300 days, after Letta’s own party, the Democratic Party pulled their support for him and looked to young politician Matteo Renzi, who was just 39 at the time, to lead the government and form a new cabinet and become Italy’s youngest-ever Prime Minister. This was without seeking his mandate from the Italian voters first and he consequently became the third Italian PM in a row not to lead a party in an election victory.
Much like his predecessors, Renzi would not last long as Prime Minister and resigned from office in 2016 following the results of a constitutional referendum that looked to concentrate more power in the Italian lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and would have allowed the lower chamber to overrule Senate votes regarding laws in certain areas. The reforms were labelled as “authoritarian” by critics and were ultimately rejected by Italians.
Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni was eventually selected by President Sergio Mattarella to form a new government, the fourth in a row not to be selected directly by voters. He lasted until the elections of 2018, which saw a crushing defeat for the Democratic Party at the hands of the populist Five Star Movement (M5S), which vocally opposed the constitutional referendum that brought down Renzi.
While the M5S were the largest single party in the election, they did not have enough seats to form a working government, leading again to another unstable coalition between them and populist Matteo Salvini’s League, with independent lawyer Giuseppe Conte selected as Prime Minister — yet another imposed leader without an electoral mandate.
— Chris Tomlinson (@TomlinsonCJ) September 27, 2022
In 2019, the coalition collapsed despite Salvini’s success at greatly reducing illegal migration as the Interior Minister and the Five Star Movement implemented its basic income programme, a major pillar of the movement.
However, tensions had been building between the two parties, which culminated in the resignation of Prime Minister Conte, who accused Matteo Salvini of “political opportunism” just prior to a proposed confidence vote on Conte’s leadership from Salvini’s League after the M5S opposed a vote on a major Italian-French rail project.
Following his resignation, Conte urged President Mattarella not to hold snap elections, arguing that reforms may be blocked by doing so. Conte was granted his wish and was allowed to form the Conte II cabinet in 2019 when the M5S joined forces with the centre-left Democrats, just months before the beginning of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic that began in Italy in early 2020.
While the second Conte cabinet presided over much of the early response to the coronavirus pandemic, Conte was ultimately forced to resign as Prime Minister in January of 2021 after former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had departed from the governing coalition along with his newly formed Italia Viva party.
Many speculated that Conte may take up the mantle of Prime Minister yet again to form a third government but instead, he was replaced by former European Central Bank (ECB) head Mario Draghi, echoing the appointment of another European technocrat, Mario Monti, just several years prior.
‘Absolutely Fake News’: Even Liberal Former PM Dismisses ‘Fascism’ Brewing in Italy Claims https://t.co/5ujbmWmawh
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 27, 2022
Unlike Monti, Draghi did not form a government of independent technocrat experts but instead led a grand coalition of nearly every major political party in Italy except for one: the Brothers of Italy (FdI) led by Giorgia Meloni.
The grand national coalition government led Italy through the rest of the coronavirus pandemic, implementing some of the most restrictive vaccine passport policies in all of Europe, including mandatory vaccinations for people over the age of 50 and vaccine requirements to use public transportation.
The Draghi national coalition relaxed its restrictive health measures earlier this year but troubles in the massive coalition led to the downfall of Draghi in July following a confidence vote in the Italian Senate that saw the League, the Five Star Movement and Forza Italia boycott, and just prior to another confidence vote in the Chamber of Deputies.
President Mattarella announced Italy would see a snap election in September, the results of which were seen after the vote was held last Sunday, with Meloni’s FdI soaring from just over four per cent of the national vote in 2018 to 26 per cent and becoming the largest single party in the entire country on a national-conservative platform.
Meloni is expected to take the reigns of government as Prime Minister next month or early November and will become the first Prime Minister to have won a national Italian election in 14 years, following six appointee Prime Ministers who led a total of seven governments.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.
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