The Sceptics Within

Meloni with political allies Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi, and Maurizio Lupi, in Rome on 22 September 2022. Photo: Independent Photo Agency Srl / Alamy Stock Photo

Politicians, however fashionable it has long been to distrust them, usually present their programmes and themselves as consonant with each other. Emmanuel Macron is a Euro federalist moderniser; Liz Truss is a Thatcherite free marketeer; Olaf Scholz is a moderate social democrat. That is their pitch to their electorates, and in that spirit, of policies harmonised with personalities, they attempt to govern.

Now comes a new force, Giorgia Meloni, a Roman, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, who has aggressively flouted that convention, and has led to one of the largest questions facing her country, and Europe: how will…