Analysis: Brothers of Italy have lead in polls as postmortem begins on technocrat’s government of disunity
If Wednesday marked a brutal, undignified, one person who enjoyed watching his downfall from the sidelines was Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, who is in pole position to become Italy’s next prime minister after snap elections this autumn.
Meloni has reason to celebrate. Brothers of Italy have gone from barely scraping 4% of the vote in the 2018 general election to becoming the biggest party in opinion polls. The rise has been consistent, and now the party leads a group including Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia that usually run together in elections.
As campaigning gets under way, commentators are contemplating how Draghi, 74, the former European Central Bank chief credited with restoring Italy’s credibility on the world stage, lost grip of power. He was appointed to lead a government of national unity in February 2021, with the main goal being to steer Italy out of the coronavirus pandemic and revive its long-stagnant economy.
Draghi’s detractors criticised the technocrat’s incapacity to act as a politician, especially when it came to dealing with parliament. “Let’s just say that not being a politician was a limitation, because it meant he wouldn’t listen to parliamentarians and their proposals,” said Catia Polidori, a deputy with Forza Italia.
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