Good morning. I’m Naomi O’Leary, Europe Correspondent, standing in for Denis Staunton while he is away.
This Friday, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni will set a record: her government will have been in power for more than 1,412 consecutive days, making it Italy’s longest-lasting since the second World War.
Since October 2022, Meloni’s right-wing coalition has presided over a period of unusual political stability for Italy, which has had 69 governments since 1945, each one lasting on average just over a year.
It was Britain and neighbouring France who took up the habit of political churn during Meloni’s four years in power, cycling through four and five prime ministers respectively as they grappled with inflation in an era of renewed global conflict.
Meloni has a far-right pedigree. Her teenage activist years were captured in a 1996 French documentary in which she said of Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini: “He was a good politician. Everything he did, he did for Italy.”
She continued to wade in extreme waters well after her ascent to the top of Italian politics, regularly claiming into 2019 that a deliberate conspiracy by elites was under way to ethnically replace Italians through immigration.
Once in office, however, Meloni moved quickly to reassure Italy’s international partners that she was no disruptive radical. In her first address to parliament, she announced that Italy was “fully part of Europe and the western world” and that her government would “continue to be a reliable partner of Nato in supporting Ukraine”.
She insisted she had never had any sympathies for undemocratic regimes, “including fascism”.
Domestically, she is still not shy of a skirmish in the culture wars. But her moderate makeover has led to her being described as a “political chameleon” and questioning of where her true beliefs lie.
With elections due to take place in Italy before the end of 2027, perhaps inevitably, she is facing a challenge from the right.
Roberto Vannacci is a retired Italian general who first came to notoriety when he self-published a socially conservative tract in 2023 that argued for traditional values, Italian patriotism and for homosexuality not to be regarded as “normal”.
The book criticised multiculturalism and immigration, and caused particular controversy by describing the physical features of a black player for Italy’s national women’s volleyball team as non-Italian.
Vannacci was elected to the European Parliament the following year as a candidate for the right-wing League party. When pressed, in an echo of the teenage Meloni, he has declined to disown Mussolini, describing him as a statesman who did some good things.
The former general has since launched his own party, National Future. Over the summer, it overtook the League and other parties within Meloni’s coalition in polls, with support of about 8 per cent.
That’s enough to mean Meloni will have to contend with Vannacci in advance of the elections – either bringing him in as an ally or taking him on as an opponent.
Vannacci’s brand is decidedly macho. His party’s manifesto states Italy should be a “Mediterranean patriarchy” that focuses on “fostering strong men, able to control their emotions and passions, protect women and dedicate themselves to the building and defence of society”.
The manifesto also calls for the abolition of the crime of femicide. A law brought in under Meloni and backed by her government defined this crime as the murder of women and girls because of their gender, to control them, or because they reject or want to leave an intimate relationship. It passed last year on International Women’s Day.
Vannacci depicts Meloni as an ally but a subordinate one, praising her while undermining her. He recently delivered a monologue on Instagram while holding two melons to his chest – a pun on her surname and a dig at her gender.
In ancient Rome-themed fantasy videos generated by AI, Vannacci depicts himself as a Roman soldier dispatching political rivals while Meloni giggles in a toga at his side.
She could be president, he suggested recently, implying he could have the more powerful position of prime minister.
Meloni has largely tried to avoid commenting. But as Vannacci’s party has risen in polls, observers have perceived an attempt to look tough and to shift back to the right.
In particular, they point to Meloni’s suspension of the Schengen free travel arrangement with Spain in response to a rush on the border on Spain’s north African territory of Ceuta, meaning all arriving travellers are subject to passport controls.
Concretely, there are two policy areas where Vannacci’s rise puts her under pressure
Immigration is one. Vannacci uses the term “remigration”.
The National Future manifesto only goes as far as proposing incentives for legal migrants to leave. However, this word is a signal to the most extreme right, who use it to mean the deportation of non-white people and those with immigrant ancestry, even those who have citizenship and who were born locally.
The second area possibly has greater international implications.
Vannacci’s party manifesto calls for the “restoration of normal diplomatic and trade relations with Moscow”. Vannacci himself has previously said in an interview he would choose Russian president Vladimir Putin over Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
This points to support for Ukraine becoming a divisive issue in Italy’s coming election, with potential implications for Europe’s unity on the matter ahead.
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