Stefano Fella

Gary Younge nails the BNP and New Labour's culpability

2009-11-22T06:24:00.000-08:00

When you watch the BNP on TV, just remember: Jack Straw started all this
To set New Labour against Griffin is simply putting the cause against the symptom

Gary Younge
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 October 2009 20.30 BST
Article history
Three years ago this month Jack Straw argued his case for urging Muslim women who attend his MP's surgery to remove their niqab. He said that he wanted to start a debate. In this, at least, he was successful.
The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said "the veil is an invitation to rape"; the Daily Mail columnist Allison Pearson said women who wear "nose bags on their faces ... have no place on British streets"; the then shadow home secretary David Davis argued that Muslims were encouraging voluntary apartheid.
And 16-year-old Daniel Coine insisted he felt threatened: "I'd go further than Jack Straw and say they should all take off their veils. You need to see people face to face. It's weird not knowing who it is you're passing in the street, specially late at night when someone might jump you."
And so Muslim women passed, in the public imagination, from being actually among the group most likely to be racially attacked to ostensibly being a primary cause of social strife – roaming the land in search of white teenagers to physically harass.
Tomorrow night the conversation that Straw started will follow its logical, lamentable path as he takes his seat alongside the British National party leader, Nick Griffin, on the panel of Question Time.
The issue of whether the BNP should be given this kind of airtime has been debated extensively elsewhere in these pages. But there is little doubt that once the BNP is on Question Time, Jack Straw – or indeed anyone in the New Labour hierarchy – is in no position to take the fight to it. The same is true for most of the rest of the British political establishment that will be represented on the panel – they have either actively colluded or passively acquiesced in the political trajectory of the past decade.
But it is no accident that this happened on New Labour's watch and no small irony that Jack Straw should set himself up as Griffin's opponent.
Economically, its neoliberal policies have resulted in growing insecurity, rising unemployment, child poverty and inequality that have alienated the poor and made the middle class feel vulnerable. Politically, its lies over the war, stewardship of the expenses scandal and internal bickering have produced widespread cynicism with our political culture. The ramifications of its role in the war on terror in general, and Iraq in particular, were to elevate fear of a racialised "other" to a matter of life and death at home. "Terror is first of all the terror of the next attack," explains Arjun Appadurai, in Fear of Small Numbers. "Terror ... opens the possibility that anyone may be a soldier in disguise, a sleeper among us, waiting to strike at the heart of our social slumber."
Meanwhile New Labour's race-baiting rhetoric gave the state's imprimatur to the notion that Britain's racial problems were not caused by racism but the existence of non-white, non-Christian and non-British people. This provided little material solace but plenty of vulnerable scapegoats.
Having inflated racism's political currency, New Labour vacated the electoral market so that others with a more ostentatious style might more freely spend it. Once they had made these ideas respectable it was only a matter of time before a party reached a position where it too would earn sufficient respectability to appear on prime time.
New Labour marginalised the white working class, assuming they had nowhere else to go, only to find some of them rush into the arms of the far right. Peter Hain has made an impressive stand over the last few weeks. But during the last election he slammed those who were abandoning New Labour as "the kind of dinner party critic who quaffs shiraz or chardonnay".
But it was always the beer talking. New Labour extinguished all hope of class solidarity and singularly failed to provide principled anti-racist alternatives, leaving a significant section of the white working class to seek cheap refuge in racism and xenophobia. In their identity they see not the potential for resistance against corruption and injustice, but only a grievance. They don't trust government and don't see any alternatives. The coming election simply provides the choice between two parties that share the intent to slash public spending, after the gift of billions to bankers.
There has always been more to the BNP than racism and always been more to racism than the BNP, which is merely the most vile electoral expression of our degraded racial discourse and political sclerosis. Under such circumstances setting Straw – and the rest of the political class – against Griffin is simply putting the cause against the symptom without any suggestion of an antidote.
This has been New Labour's problem all along. While they have long recognised that racism is a problem, it never seemed to occur to them that anti-racism might be the solution. This should not obscure some of the positive things Labour has done – most notably the Macpherson report and the Race Relations Amendment Act. But in the words of the late African American writer James Baldwin: "What it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other."
The BNP's victories are a product of our politics. Its defeat, when it comes, will necessarily be a product of a change in our politics. But since New Labour's politics enabled the BNP, it is in no position to disable it. The BNP is a bottom feeder. But the system is rotting from the head down.

Seumas Milne sums up why the Postal Strike is necessary

2009-11-22T06:23:00.000-08:00

Faced with such an attack, it would be folly not to strike
Postal workers have been left with little option. The real madness lies with those itching to pick a fight before an election

Seumas Milne
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 October 2009 21.20 BST
Article history
There's nothing that quite brings together politicians, metropolitan media and corporate barons in a chorus of self-righteous rage and wishful thinking like the prospect of low-paid manual workers going on strike to defend their interests – and actually having an impact on their world into the bargain. That's exactly what's been happening in the run-up to today's walkout by nearly 50,000 Royal Mail sorting office staff and drivers and tomorrow's planned stoppage by 70,000-odd delivery and collection workers.
There's excitable talk of violence and riots. Postal workers are said to be engaged in an industrial suicide pact. The Sun believes it's "madness"; the Financial Times thinks they're turkeys voting for both Christmas and Thanksgiving. There is a string of silly comparisons with the 1984-5 miners' strike. One Times writer reckons the workforce is "completely bonkers". How could they even think of withdrawing their labour when the economy is still on its knees and the industry is besieged by private competitors and the lure of the internet?
Royal Mail's managing director, Mark Higson, describes the Communication Workers Union's decision to call the strikes as an "appalling and unjustified attack on customers". Lord Mandelson of Foy, who technically owns Royal Mail in his capacity as business secretary, declares himself "beyond anger" at the posties' folly.
Back in the real world, postal workers might have been thought foolish if they hadn't in fact voted to take industrial action. In recent months, Royal Mail's meat-headed management has accelerated attempts to impose job cuts and office closures, longer shifts and increases in the working week, heavier workloads, longer and faster delivery rounds, more casual and part-time working and effective cuts in pay – while reports of rampant bullying, harassment and sackings on paper-thin pretexts multiply.
Meanwhile, pension entitlements have been hit and wage rates frozen, at a time when the company posted profits of $321m and the chief executive Adam Crozier – formerly of Saatchi & Saatchi – pocketed £3m and £1.2m in pay and bonuses in successive years, compared with an £18,000 salary for the average postal worker. Any organised workforce faced with such attacks on its basic conditions of work would be bound to resist them.
But it's not as if the union has set its face against the new technology, changes in working practices or even reductions in staffing regarded as necessary for the postal service to survive and thrive. In fact, 63,000 jobs have gone in the past five years alone, and it has been the breakdown of an earlier "modernisation agreement" for negotiated change that has led to the current dispute.
The union is now offering a new three-year deal based on the principle of "consent and democracy in the workplace". But the clearest sign of who is behind the breakdown is the fact that while the CWU has been offering to go to the conciliation service Acas for talks without preconditions, the company – backed by the government – has refused to do so unless the stoppages are called off, while ostentatiously recruiting 30,000 casual workers to cut the ground from beneath its staff.
Against that background, it's hardly surprising that the postal workers' leader, Billy Hayes, concludes: "They're trying to break the power of the union and its influence in the workplace." If that's the case, there will be months of disruption and mayhem. This is an industry blighted by years of under-investment, threats of privatisation and a regulatory regime rigged in favour of private competitors. While it's true that the internet (along with the recession) is cutting letter volumes, it's also expanding the packages and parcels business as more people shop online.
Post is far from being in terminal decline. But by insisting on companies like TNT having privileged access to the Royal Mail network to cherry-pick its most profitable business, the government has hobbled its chance to grow and develop new services. Instead, from Sunday collections to second deliveries, old services have been cut back. Since Mandelson's plans to part-privatise the service were, as he put it, "jostled for space" by the opposition of Labour MPs earlier this year, the promised bailout of Royal Mail's pension fund deficit has also been put on hold, squeezing potential investment still further. The result has been relentless pressure on the workforce and today's walkout.
But the postal stoppages aren't the only distant echo of the "winter of discontent" public sector strikes that marked the dying days of the last Labour government in 1979 – and could be a taste of things to come, if David Cameron comes to power. Yesterday, hundreds of Leeds refuse collectors and street cleaners voted to continue a strike against pay cuts of more than £5,000 that has already lasted six weeks, with rubbish piling up in the city's streets.
By refusing to accept these assaults on their livelihoods, both Leeds binmen and postal workers across the country are resisting the race to the bottom that has been such an ugly hallmark of the past couple of decades. It's no good complaining about growing inequality or recognising, as Mandelson has done, that the employment relationship is a "fundamentally unequal one", while consistently opposing the use of industrial action to do something about it.
And it would be folly, even suicidal, for the government to pick a fight with public service workers before a general election, as the Callaghan administration did on a much larger scale 30 years ago. Alarmingly, Gordon Brown is reported as having been advised to bracket bankers and postal workers as "vested interests" that need to be taken on. Instead, ministers should be giving Royal Mail and the Post Office a new lease of life in the public sector with the privateers off their backs and managers able to bring their staff with them.
Yesterday postal union negotiators reported that they had been "edging towards an agreement" but had failed to make enough progress to call off the strikes. The test will come in the next few days: do Royal Mail managers, and the ministers behind them, want a deal to give a more progressive future for a popular public service – or a self-defeating, confected confrontation with one of the strongest workforces in the public sector? We'll know soon enough.

Foreign media coverage of Berlusconi - from La Repubblica online

2009-08-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

Satira di Bbc e Letterman show"Silvio è fissato con il sesso"

CRISTINA NADOTTI

http://www.repubblica.it/2009/08/sezioni/politica/berlusconi-divorzio-21/bbc-letterman/bbc-letterman.html?ref=search

LONDRA - Come se "Il meglio di Zelig" dedicasse un terzo della puntata a Gordon Brown. Giovedì sera a "Mock the week" su Bbc2, uno degli show di satira politica più popolari in Gran Bretagna, il bersaglio delle battute serrate dei sei comici è stato Silvio Berlusconi, dipinto come un prosseneta che non si lascia sfuggire nessuna occasione per proporre donnine ai suoi colleghi. Del resto che il Cavaliere sia ormai il bersaglio della satira politica ovunque lo conferma la citazione fatta dallo statunitense David Letterman nella puntata del 19 agosto. Il popolarissimo show americano è cominciato con la voce fuori campo che annunciava: "Il primo ministro italiano fissato con il sesso: David Letterman".

"Mock the week" è una sorta di gara tra i comici, ai quali viene presentata una fotografia su cui devono fare delle battute, oppure una situazione su cui inventare le "frasi che non avreste mai sentito". Il Cavaliere andava bene in ogni occasione, c'era sempre qualcosa da tirare fuori su di lui. Così quando alle spalle dello pseudo-arbitro è apparsa la foto di Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Sarkozy e Berlusconi, la prima battuta è stata: "Fantastico notare come Brown sia incredibilmente in imbarazzo nell'incontrare Berlusconi, che del resto ha tutta l'aria di uno di quelli che stanno fuori dai locali a dire "Ho belle ragazze a disposizione, vuoi una ragazza Brown?"" Un altro comico rincara: "Berlusconi mi ricorda tanto un tizio completamente fatto che ho incontrato una volta in vacanza e mi ha detto "Datti alla pazza gioia".
Un'altra battuta arriva nel doppiaggio su un filmato reale. Gordon Brown accoglie i capi di governo di altri Paesi e a ciascuno attacca il tormentone "Per favore, potresti dire qualcosa di buono sulla mia politica economica?". Ma quando arriva Berlusconi Brown fa: "Tu è meglio non dica niente", mentre al nostro presidente fanno ripetere: "Guarda, la festa è già organizzata, ci sono ragazze per tutti".

Il quotidiano spagnolo El Mundo dà conto, in un articolo intitolato "Berlusconi passerà alla storia per aver favorito la mafia" dell'affondo fatto dal leader dell'Idv Antonio di Pietro contro la politica del governo in materia di lotta alla criminalità organizzata.

Il britannico Tribune Magazine, organo del Labour Party che si propone di "vigilare sulla democrazia in ogni Paese", dedica ampio spazio all'articolo di Stefano Fella e Carlo Ruzza, autori del libro "Re-inventing the Italian Right - territorial politics, populism and post-fascism", pubblicato da Routledge. I due ricercatori ripercorrono le ultime rivelazioni fatte da Repubblica sul Cavaliere cercano di dare una risposta al perché "nonostante le vicende imbarazzanti, Berlusconi resti così popolare in Italia". "Naturalmente è la stampa che Berlusconi non controlla, in particolare la Repubblica e il settimanale l'Espresso, che ha svelato la storia" dicono gli autori, che giungono alla conclusione che il successo politico di Berlusconi si spiega "con le risorse, politiche e dei media, a sua disposizione". (22 agosto 2009)

How Italy fell for Berlusconi

2009-08-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

Stefano Fella and Carlo Ruzza examine why the increasingly controversial Italian leader remains so popular in his country, Tribune, London, 14 August 2009

http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2009/08/17/how-italy-fell-for-berlusconi/

Since his wife filed for divorce in May, accusing of him of “consorting with minors” and being in need of medical help (after reports that he had turned up at the 18th birthday party of a young lady – the nature of his relationship with whom is rather unclear), the revelations about Silvio Berlusconi’s private life have snowballed.

One woman, Patrizia D’Addario, alleged she was paid to attend a party at his holiday residence. She later claimed to have had sex with him, backing up her allegations with recordings of conversations she had with the Prime Minister and media mogul. These covered a variety of topics including his sexual performance, advice from Berlusconi on how to keep herself satisfied sexually and promises of support for planning permission for a stalled construction project.

The allegations from D’Addario accompany broader revelations about a lifestyle of lavish parties held by Berlusconi in several of his luxurious residences, along with the publication of explicit photos that have embarrassed a former Czech prime minister, among others.
All this is against a background in which Berlusconi presents himself as a strong ally of the Roman Catholic Church and a defender of law and morality. The government that Berlusconi leads was in the process of initiating legislation to punish prostitutes’ clients.

Despite the embarrassing headlines, Berlusconi remains popular in Italy. Like his many gaffes – such as complimenting Barack Obama on his suntan and comparing a German socialist MEP to a Nazi concentration camp guard – the headlines may even help to reinforce his populist “outsider” status as a man of the people with a mischievous twinkle in his eye who refuses to bow to the stuffy protocols of the political establishment.

While Berlusconi’s popularity rating does not appear to have suffered much in the light of recent events, he may be concerned about a possible withdrawal of support or distancing on the part of the Catholic Church. His party and coalition allies, on the other hand, have rallied around in strong support, expressing disgust at the publications giving coverage to D’Addario and her assertions.

Berlusconi’s conflicts of interest are also highly relevant here. He is Italy’s richest man and owns the country’s three main private television stations, as well as a leading daily newspaper and other publishing outlets. This combines with his government’s control over the main state broadcasting channels. Neither the public RAI TV channels nor Berlusconi’s own Mediaset channels have covered the D’Addario revelations. Most Italians get their current affairs news from TV, while newspaper readership is low.

Of course, it is the non-Berlusconi-owned press – particularly the centre-left daily La Repubblica and weekly L’Espresso – which have led on this story. The news will have still reached most Italians through word of mouth, the internet or by glancing at the headlines at newsstands. Many, though, will have simply smirked or shrugged their shoulders. For some, that a 72-year-old man can apparently still display such sexual prowess will be a source of admiration (D’Addario described being kept up all night by Berlusconi). For others, it will simply be a private matter and not relevant to Berlusconi’s ability to lead Italy.

Berlusconi’s continuous refrain for the past years has been that there is a left-liberal plot against him. This is being conducted through the media (the parts which he does not own or control) and the judiciary. His claims have had a considerable impact. His supporters have not taken seriously many of the legal investigations into his business affairs. Berlusconi has faced several investigations into his commercial activities, with accusations of tax fraud and bribery. However, he has evaded prosecution through changes in the law passed by his own governments.

Marcello Dell’Utri, his right-hand man, has been found guilty of Mafia association. In recent months, British lawyer David Mills, the estranged husband of Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, was found guilty of taking bribes – presumably from Berlusconi.

The D’Addario affair has led to investigations being launched into payments made by another Berlusconi associate, Giampaolo Tarantini, to women in return for their attendance at parties held at Berlusconi’s holiday residence. The Prime Minister may also face investigation into the claims he apparently made on the D’Addario tapes that Phoenician tombs had been found on his estate in Sardinia. Under Italian law, such finds must be reported within 24 hours.

The allegations of conspiracy, the appeals to the traditional macho instincts and sexual hypocrisy of an essentially conservative Catholic nation, along with his ownership and control of much of the media, help to explain the continuing appeal of Berlusconi despite the gaffes, sexual indiscretions and allegations of corruption.

Berlusconi’s political success – he has won four general elections in Italy and continues to enjoy approval ratings that are the envy of many of his fellow European leaders – is more broadly explained by the resources (both media and political) that he has at his disposal and his ability to interpret and encapsulate the anti-political zeitgeist prevalent in Italy since the 1990s. He has skilfully stitched together a coalition that appeals to the conservative yet consumerist and individualistic values of a large swathe of the Italian electorate.

Berlusconi has based his appeal around a platform of anti-political populism. This is all the more remarkable, given the numerous investigations into his alleged corruption and abuses of power, and the record of his governments in passing a number of laws to protect his media and business interests, hamper investigations into his affairs and grant him immunity from prosecution.
Berlusconi’s spectacular initial success in forming a party from scratch and winning a general election in 1994 came on the back of the tangentopoli corruption scandal that implicated the parties which had governed Italy since the Second World War. Around a third of parliamentarians were placed under formal investigation for corruption.

Berlusconi has played up his credentials as a political outsider, speaking the language of the common people and purporting to represent their interests against a self-serving political elite. A conservative Italian populace that was sick of the complacent, stuffy and corrupt Italian political establishment quickly fell for his charms. Berlusconi’s success as an entrepreneur – a figure that the Italian people can look up to – is used to his advantage.

Like all populists, he sees himself as speaking directly to and on behalf of the people – and is thus rather impatient towards the norms of liberal constitutional democracy, such as an independent judiciary and parliamentary scrutiny. He recently described parliamentarians as useless. His populism is also reflected in the way he demonises his political opponents – denouncing the left as dangerous communists, despite the mild social democratic policies espoused by the centre-left.

Although Berlusconi initially benefited from the judicial investigations that brought down the post-war political establishment, when the judges turned their attention to him he turned against them – depicting them as part of a left-wing conspiracy, as “mad” and in need of psychiatric help.

His success has also been dependent on stitching together a coalition based on forces that would be deemed as political outcasts anywhere else in Western Europe. Since entering politics at the head of his own political party, Forza Italia, in 1994, Berlusconi’s principal allies have been the National Alliance, which emerged out of Italy’s post-war neo-fascist movement, and the Northern League, a regionalist populist party which has at times advocated the break-up of Italy and whose leaders employ the xenophobic and Islamophobic discourse of the European far right. On top of these alliances, Berlusconi has also brought a number of smaller groupings into his coalition, including one led by Alessandra Mussolini (Il Duce’s granddaughter). She remains unrepentant about Italy’s fascist past.

Some of the most disturbing discourse has emanated from Berlusconi’s fellow populists in the Northern League. Its leader, Umberto Bossi, has suggested cannon be fired at ships bringing migrants to Italy’s shores. Another leading figure, Roberto Calderoli, was forced to resign from government in 2006 (before returning in 2008), following his inflammatory gesture in wearing a T-shirt on a TV show depicting the controversial cartoon images of the prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper that had sparked virulent protests in the Muslim world. Calderoli has also endorsed activities such as the grazing of pigs on land designated for the construction of mosques. This is in order to desecrate the land in the eyes of Muslims, who are generally presented as potential terrorists, as well as hostile to the Italian Catholic identity.
Crucially, Berlusconi’s coalition has been able to capitalise on the failure of the centre-left to provide a convincing or united alternative. The main centre-left force, the former Italian Communist Party, appeared to have a bright future following the end of the Cold War and the dropping of its Marxist identity which allowed it to present itself as a legitimate constitutional party at the beginning of the 1990s. However, Berlusconi stepped into the void resulting from the collapse in 1993 of the Christian Democrats, previously in government continuously since 1947, in the wake of tangentopoli. His aim was to thwart the centre-left. Many commentators suggest that Berlusconi was also motivated by the desire to protect his media empire from interference. The old ruling parties had allowed him to secure dominance over Italy’s private TV output.

In its two periods in government, from 1996-2001 and 2006-2008, the centre-left opposition to Berlusconi was racked with division, as a variety of forces ranging from unreformed Communists on the radical left to rather conservative Christian democratic forces in the centre fought for influence These forces are united mainly by their opposition to Berlusconi and his allies. The merger of the ex-Communist Democratic Left with some of the old Christian Democrats was not enough to prevent another Berlusconi victory in 2008, following the collapse of Romano Prodi’s centre-left government.

Berlusconi’s coalition has managed to depict the centre-left as more concerned with protecting the employment rights and pension privileges of those already in work, rather than increasing employment opportunities for the large number of young people without a steady job. The right has also been able to capitalise on widespread fears relating to security and immigration – fears that its own discourse and media coverage (particularly from Berlusconi’s media outlets) helps to whip up and which are most colourfully conveyed by the Northern League.

The appeal of different parts of the coalition helps it to win support in different parts of the country. The National Alliance is strongest in the south, where it appeals to essentially conservative but state-dependent voters. It also benefits from a culture less in tune with the anti-fascist consensus of the north.

The Northern League, on the other hand, wins support in wealthy small towns in the north and exploits fears about the dilution of local identities, brought by immigration and the impact of the globalisation which undermines local prosperity. This was seen in its campaign against Chinese imports undercutting local production.

In sum, the right has been able to align itself with conservative tendencies within much of the electorate, particularly on issues such as tax, family values and immigration. At the same time, its appeal to anti-political sentiments continues to bear fruit, with populist signals and symbolic discourse resonating with these voters, even when not followed up by concrete policy action.
Another key factor in the success of the right – and Berlusconi in particular – is the way it feeds off a cultural model diffused throughout the media and especially Berlusconi’s TV channels, where a bland and conservative projection of Italian family life is injected with consumerist, aspirational and acquisitive values. It is notable that surveys show Berlusconi’s popularity is greatest among those sections of the Italian population who spend the most hours in front of their television sets.

Italy presents a salutary lesson for other European countries of what can happen when widespread public hostility to establishment politicians leads to a collapse in support for traditional parties and political outsiders are then able to garner support on the back of this anti-party sentiment. When this is combined with a surge in support of populist, nationalistic and illiberal responses to societal changes, then the dangers to conventional liberal democratic norms can be stark. This is particularly the case when the media is so obviously partisan and the person who embodies the populist anti-political zeitgeist owns much of the media and is so well-schooled in exploiting its potential.

Stefano Fella and Carlo Ruzza are the co-authors of Re-inventing the Italian Right – territorial politics, populism and post-fascism, published by Routledge

http://www.routledgepolitics.com/books/Re-inventing-the-Italian-Right-isbn9780415344616

No we can’t - Italy fails to change for the better

2008-04-28T05:36:00.000-07:00

While in the long term the consolidation of the two party blocs seen in the April 2008 elections may bring greater stability to the Italian political system (and bring the nature of party competition closer to that found elsewhere in European democracies), in the short term the prospects for coherent and responsible government in Italy are poor. I do not agree that the outcome of the election is a good one for Italy. If anything, it is close to the worst possibe result. The right-wing parties have a clear mandate to govern Italy for the next 5 years and, as they showed between 2001 and 2006, they know how to maintain 'just enough unity' to ensure they maintain their grip in power (something the centre-left has yet to learn).

While the centre-left has made some progress in forming a forming a coherent political bloc, in the form of the 'Democratic party' - as reflected also in their decision to run separately from the radical left/green parties, the centre-right leadership - notably Berlusconi - remained intent on seeking power through the creation of the broadest possible electoral coalition, even if this involves xenophobic populists such as the Lega Nord, and unapologetic fascists such as Alessandra Mussolini and Giuseppe Ciarrapico. Berlusconi also wanted to bring in the new right-wing formation of another apologist for fascism, Francesco Storace. But this was blocked by the National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini, who has made strides to distance his own party from its neo-fascist past. However, Berlusconi maintained that Ciarrapico’s inclusion was necessary given the support that his local newspapers could offer.

Speculation about the appointment of various individuals to government posts continues. The Lega is pushing for Roberto Calderoli to be deputy prime minister. This is a man who has supported initiatives by local activists to graze pigs on land destined for the construction of Mosques, so as to desecrate it in the eyes of Muslims. He was also forced to resign from the previous Berlusconi government after revealing on a TV show that he was wearing a T-shirt bearing the images that had previously provoked Islamic protests against the Danish newspapers that had published them. The Lega has exploited to the full concerns about an Islamic threat to Italian identity and security in the north, and against foreigners in general. These are linked to concerns about globalization and its impact on local communities, which have widespread resonance.

So why was the right able to make such a spectacular return for government?

The Prodi government had quickly become unpopular because of increases in taxes (deemed necessary to address the hole in public finances left by the Berlusconi government) and by its attempted liberalisation reforms which angered various professional lobbies. Moreover it was unable to deliver governing stability, with contradictory signals being given by it centre-left core (the PD) and its radical left on a number of issues, and with rebellions also coming from centrist parties. Indeed, it was the withdrawal of the centrist UDEUR from the coalition that precipitated its collapse. The centre-right was once again able to capitalise on popular fears related to security. Data showed that its positions on crime and immigration had resonated better with public opinion even in 2006. In the intervening years, it was able to better reflect concerns on issues such as the alleged influx of criminals from Romania, and the delinquency emanating from Roma camps. At the same time, fears about economic security were also exploited. Worries about restricted and reduced employment opportunities were associated with an apparent concern by the left to protect the employment rights and pension privileges of those already in jobs rather than a concern with increasing employment opportunities for the large number of young people without a fixed job.

Whether or not the creation of the PDL by Berlusconi (bringing together Forza Italia and the National Alliance) made a huge difference to the result is not totally clear. Accurate calculations for 2008 as regards the AN and FI are impossible given they ran a joint list of candidates. Nevertheless, the vote for the PDL in 2008 was 37.6%, compared to a combined AN-FI vote in 2006 of 36%. The increased PDL vote could also be partly explained by the influx of a number of smaller groups, ranging from Mussolini’s unrepentant neo-fascists to Gianfranco Rotondi’s new DC and defectors from the UDC such as Giovanardi. One should also take into account here that AN in particular would have lost votes to Storace’s La Destra. In any case, the PDL performance in 2008 is much less impressive when one considers that the combined AN-FI vote in 2001 was 41.4%. Clearly votes had been lost since then to the centre and to La Destra.

However the biggest gainer in 2008 was the Lega, which stormed back to levels not seen since the mid-1990s, polling 8.3% of the vote (rising from 4.6% in 2006 and more than double its vote of 3.9%). Despite the consolidation of the two party blocs witnessed in the election, the Lega’s role remained indispensable to the centre-right, and its increased vote was decisive in ensuring victory in 2008. Early data on electoral flows from the Piepole polling institute show that the large majority of the increased vote for the Lega’s in 2008 had come from those who voted FI and AN in 2006. In particular, the Lega had succeeded in winning back voters in its northern heartlands lost to FI in the mid 1990s, as well as new generations of voters. However, while the PDL lost votes in the north, it gained them in the south – winning back voters lost in 2006 to the UDC and the centre-left. The PDL did particular well in the urban peripheries and provincial towns and countryside of the south (less so in the urban centres), winning support among all types of workers, many attracted by Berlusconi’s promise to abolish local property tax for owners of one home. It also garnered support from voters dissatisfied with local centre-left administrations. For example, the PDL won 49.1% of the vote in Campania (the AN-FI combined scored 39.1% in 2006), where dissatisfaction was high with the centre-left’s handling of the refuse crisis, which had left piles of rubbish blighting the streets of Naples (Sud, le periferie votano Pdl, Corriere della Sera, 18 April 2008).

One other notable feature of the 2008 election was the collapse in the vote of the greens and radical left. Their join list collapsed from 8.1% to 3.8%. Most of their former voters appear to have switched to the PD (which in turn lost votes, mainly from its catholic element, to the UDC, though also to the PDL). Some green voters, however, also appear to have switched to the Lega (I flussi elettorali, la Repubblica, 17 April 2008). The Lega thus appeared to have benefited both from dissatisfaction with the left and a lack of willingness of some northern voters to continue to vote directly for Berlusconi, benefiting from its rooted presence on the ground and experience of local administration in the northern regions and appearing more in touch with local concerns to many voters.

So do Italians get the government they deserved? Well those that voted for the PDL and the Lega certainly did. If Berlusconi could, as promised, bring economic growth while reducing taxes and increasing spending on public works, then this would be wonderful. But the sums do not add up. Voters, perhaps correctly, may have judged the centre-right more likely to bring stability. But Italy’s problems require a clamp down on tax evasion, organised crime, political corruption and clientelistic practices in public procurement and employment recruitment. The centre-right’s record from 2001-2006 was not good in these areas. Berlusconi has previously condoned tax evasion, and conducted politics on the basis of patrimonialism, passing laws to protect his and his cronies interests in business and in avoiding judicial scrutiny. The record here is unlikely to change.