Italy's ridiculous but predictable crisis
When a coalition member deserts a 'national unity' government largely over which type of waste incinerator Rome should use, we know that election fever is setting in
The question posed by an Italian journalist a couple of days ago was deliciously tempting: Why did I think that international leaders, notably those in Washington and Brussels, seem to care so much about whether Mario Draghi remains Italy’s prime minister at this time of geopolitical crisis while they didn’t seem at all concerned about Boris Johnson’s resignation from the same job in the UK? If you didn’t know much about BoJo this would indeed be a puzzle given that the UK has been one of the biggest backers of Ukraine’s fight for survival and Italy rather a minor one, both as a share of the country's defence budget or in absolute terms. Moreover, Italy must anyway, under its constitution, hold a general election at the latest in June next year, whereas the UK need not hold one until December 2024, which means that any concerned world leaders are lamenting the potential loss of, at most, a further 6-8 months of Mr Draghi occupying Palazzo Chigi, while being unconcerned by losing about 28 months of Mr Johnson.
The tempting — and accurate — answer would have been that one is an incompetent clown determined to flout international treaties he has himself signed, while the other is one of the most competent and admired public officials of modern times. So the loss of 28 months of Mr Johnson counts as a huge bonus, while every extra month of Mr Draghi as prime minister of the EU’s second most indebted country looks like something to be cherished. Mr Johnson’s “Clownfall”, as The Economist beautifully headlined it, ranks as one of the great stories of self-destruction in political history. If Mr Draghi’s term is cut short, it will be entirely thanks to the political games and deceits practised by others.
Nonetheless, my answer to the journalist’s question was that the fuss over the potential “Draghifall” is still overdone. It is certainly true that Mr Draghi’s government may fall in coming days as the left-wing (but incoherent) Five Star Movement has made demands for changes in a government bill giving domestic economic support against the cost-of-living crisis, including opposing the waste-to-energy incinerator for Rome that its fellow coalition member, the Democratic Party, has pushed for; and as other parties in the coalition, notably the right-wing League, are also now cutting up rough. The situation is as unseemly as it is chaotic, pays scant attention to the seriousness of the moment, and Mr Draghi can be forgiven for seemingly having thrown his hands in the air and saying “basta”, enough. He therefore offered his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella who refused it, sending him back to Parliament on Wednesday to make a speech and thereby to test whether he still has the makings of a workable coalition, or not.
Two facts need to be borne in mind when assessing this: the first is that, thanks to that election timetable, it was always predictable that one or more parties in the coalition that has supported Mr Draghi since February 2021 would start to play rough just before or after the summer holidays, even calculating that fighting the next election as an opposition party might be better than having been part of the incumbent government; and the second is that Italy’s party system has in recent years become highly volatile and fragmented, which is why the former president of the European Central Bank was recruited in the first place by President Sergio Mattarella. That reality has been put into a sort of suspension by the presence of Mr Draghi, but has not been changed. If anything, it has got more volatile.
We should remember also the related fact that last December, when launching his bid to be chosen by Parliament as President of the Republic, Mr Draghi himself said that his government’s work was largely done. This was of course a political statement made to justify his willingness to desert Palazzo Chigi and ascend to the Quirinale, but it will also have reflected an acceptance of electoral reality, which meant that at best at that stage he had 6-7 months in which his government would be able to pass legislation before unity crumbled and the campaign took over. If anything, this was over-optimistic: passing reforms has been extremely difficult, with parties and interest groups fighting even apparently minor aspects of a bill to boost competition so as to defend small beach concessionaires, for example. And, as so often, Italian cities have been beset by strikes by taxi-drivers and by public transport.
Mr Draghi’s bold statement was made, it is true, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came to dominate the political, economic and energy agendas: in the face of that crisis, Mr Draghi has been a reassuring, though not central, face internationally, and as always a steady hand domestically. Equally notable, however, is that despite — or perhaps because of — his virtues, Mr Draghi is not liked by many of the main political players. That is in part why he failed to be elected president in January, forcing Mr Mattarella to accept a second seven-year term, but is also now why some politicians would be happy to get rid of him. They do not like to be overshadowed. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
Italy’s political crisis is thus utterly predictable and not all that game-changing. One way or another, the country will hold general elections, either early ones probably in the first half of October, or roughly on schedule in April or May next year, and those elections will need to yield a new government. The difference between these two outcomes depends on decisions made in the coming days chiefly by the currently rebel Five Star Movement, and by Mr Draghi himself.
It is easy to see why Five Star are in a state of agitation. This is the (largely) left-wing populist movement, launched by the comedian Beppe Grillo and which stormed to 25% of the vote in the 2013 general elections and then dominated the 2018 election with more than 32% of the vote. Their “Clownfall” has been slower than Mr Johnson’s, but still relentless, amid a certain amount of chaos and confusion. After spending a year in government in coalition with the right-wing, also populist, League party under the prime ministership of a supposedly neutral former law professor who had never run for office, Giuseppe Conte, that government collapsed and was replaced by a coalition with the centre-left Democratic Party, Free and Equal, and Italia Viva, still under Mr Conte. Desertions of Five Star parliamentarians to other parties occurred throughout this time. The political identity of Five Star looked unclear, to say the least. Then the rug was pulled out under it by Italia Viva’s Matteo Renzi in January 2021 and in was brought Mario Draghi to save the day, and to save Italy from wasting the prospect of nearly €200 billion of grants and loans for public investment that was suddenly on offer from the European Union’s Next Generation Fund. He took office with parliamentary support, and ministerial participation, from all the political parties from Five Star through the Democratic Party and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, to Matteo Salvini’s League. Only the far-right Brothers of Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, chose to stay aloof.
Five Star has been crumbling all the while, and last month the parliamentary party formally split in a disagreement over support for Italy’s modest shipments of military aid to Ukraine. The foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, a former party leader, left with 60 of the movement’s 227 parliamentarians, pledging to continue to support Mr Draghi and his Ukraine policy. The rest of the movement is being led, in a somewhat wobbly manner, by Mr Conte. Which makes his decision to try to grab the headlines by abstaining on the government’s bill last week for domestic economic aid understandable politically, even if rather ridiculous on every other measure.
Mr Draghi’s decision will presumably depend on a balance between his declining reserves of patience and his sense of duty. He clearly cannot achieve much, if anything more in whatever time in office remains to him. All he can do is to keep the ship of state steady, to prepare and write a sensible annual budget, and ensure that EU Commission targets are met during the second half of this year so that Italy will receive the next tranche of the EU Next Generation Funds for its own Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza.
What will happen? A key point to recognise about Italian politics is that while the behaviour of institutions and the flow of political forces in elections and polls are quite steady, and just as predictable (or not) as in other countries, the moments of crisis that occur are largely about personalities and the psychology of power. This makes politics predictable in the medium term, but often not at all predictable tomorrow or the day after.
It is thus entirely possible that Mr Conte will back down, maintain Five Star’s support for Mr Draghi, and that as a result the other parties will fall into line, allowing the Draghi government to continue. Or it is possible that Five Star will pull out, but that Mr Draghi will form a new government with the remaining elements of the coalition, for the parliamentary numbers would suffice, thanks to that split by Mr di Maio last month. Or Mr Draghi might resign, following which President Mattarella might invite someone else, probably a financial technocrat such as Daniele Franco to current economy minister, to form a new government dedicated simply to preparing and passing a new budget this autumn ahead of elections after the new year. Or those early October elections might actually occur.
Finally, how much does this matter? What really will matter is the outcome of those elections, whenever they occur. Many people would rather not worry about that until they really have to, so buying another 6-8 months of Draghi would be preferable. But the most important legacy of the short Draghi government of 2021-22 or early 2023 will be the PNRR and the framework of auditing and accountability he has set up around it. The durability of that will not be affected by whether the elections take place in October 2022 or April/May 2023. The test will come as and when a new government takes office and seeks to act within that framework, or to change it. Some dream that even after those elections, the political situation might be such that Mr Draghi will be invited back again. Nothing is impossible, but the best advice is: don’t count on it. It is much likelier that a politician will be Italy’s prime minister after that election. Then the fun will start.
Thank you for making sense what seems like Three Card Monty (rhyming with Conte). I do hope you’ll post an assessment of Mr Draghi’s
Wednesday address and the fallout?
A dopo domani