The Original Sin of Giorgia Meloni

Giorgia Meloni is a sinner. In addition to being the Magic Boot’s first female premier, Signora Meloni is the Italian Republic’s first right-wing head of government. That’s her original sin — according to the Cassandras of the left. To her credit, Ms. Meloni has evinced a willingness to compromise. That is, she has demonstrated the same preparedness to take half a loaf of pane that characterized President Reagan in his dealings with his Democratic opposition. Years before becoming president, the Gipper made a cameo appearance on the Dean Martin Show — accompanied by a highway construction crew. When Dino inquired why Ronnie had brought the workers along, the hardhat-clad Reagan said he wanted to demonstrate that he was a middle-of-the-road Republican. Though the media continue to depict Prime Minister Meloni’s administration as a far-right government, this is so much poppycock. Or is it agitprop? Like Reagan, Ms. Meloni is a middle-of-the-strada, or più-centrista, conservative. Little illustrates this more than what happened when Ms. Meloni accompanied the president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, on National Liberation Day to lay a wreath at the Altare della Patria, the Altar of the Fatherland.In commemorating the anniversary of Italy’s liberation from German occupation, the prime minister chose unity over enmity. Ms. Meloni had called for her coalition members to embrace the spirit of the holiday, despite their reservations about the Resistance. Italy’s first anti-fascist prime minister, Ferruccio Parri, who served from June 1945 to December 1945 and was himself a partisan, acknowledged that “In the partisan movement there were the good and the bad, the heroes and the looters, the generous and the cruel.”Added he: “There was a people with its virtues and its vices. There were the partisans of the eleventh hour, in general a detestable race. And then the exploiters and profiteers of the partisan movement.” Hostilities in Italy actually ended on May 2, 1945, when the Germans formally surrendered to the Allies. The April 25 holiday was later chosen by the Alcide De Gasperi government in 1946 to highlight the role of the partisans. After foolishly mangling the history of the Ardeatine Massacre in a television appearance, the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, joined Ms. Meloni and Mr. Mattarella at the Altare on April 25. In an unexpected twist, though, both Silvio Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini appeared to question Ms. Meloni’s sincerity regarding her denunciation of fascism. While one may dismiss such actions as a yearning for the spotlight, the net effect was a political gift to the left. Ms. Meloni must ride herd on such drive-by broadsides. With friends like these, one doesn’t need Elly Schlein. Or Giuseppe “Giuseppi” Conte. In addition to commemorating April 25, Ms. Meloni could consider promoting a national celebration of the founding of Roma Aeterna. Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BCE — before the common era.Giorgia Meloni’s modus operandi is to focus on the ties that bind her fellow citizens. This philosophy undergirds her evocation and exultation of the Magic Boot’s entrepreneurs and enterprises. Italy engendered an economic miracle in the 1950s and 1960s thanks to the grit, vigor, and pluck of its innovative captains of industry. Prime Minister Meloni has repeatedly sounded the call for a renewal of that era’s resolve. In a recent visit to Britain, she was lauded by her conservative British counterpart, Rishi Sunak, who spoke of Ms. Meloni’s “very careful handling of the Italian economy.” Mr. Sunak’s praise isn’t center-right puffery, however.The gap between the yields on Italian and German government bonds, which is a key indicator of risk, has narrowed over last year’s figure. Hedge funds scurried to, as the Financial Times put it, “unwind bets against Italian government bonds in recent weeks, cutting their losses as the highly indebted country confounds expectations to deliver strong returns following a period of political calm.” The FT also noted Ms. Meloni’s “lack of confrontation with Brussels” and the reality of the Italian economy, “which is expected to grow 1.2 per cent this year, outpacing the ECB’s 1 per cent growth forecast for the wider Eurozone.” Given such results — and the Italian prime minister’s foreign policy alignment with that of Britain — Mr. Sunak’s plaudits for Ms. Meloni were on point, even though much more needs to be done if Giorgia Meloni is to achieve a 21st-century Italian miracle.

The Original Sin of Giorgia Meloni

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