The war with Spain is senseless. The watchword: full retreat

The Italy-Spain row is utterly senseless. Meloni has to defend herself against Vannacci, but in doing so she turns him into a hero – the man whose mere menacing presence is enough to ensure the collapse of intra-European relations. Sánchez must keep an eye on Vox and the People’s Party, and on the judiciary – all forces threatening to bring down a minority government that has been unable to pass a budget for three years (the secret behind Spain’s economic expansion?). The instrumental use of foreign policy is nonsense; worse still, it is a way of shooting oneself in the foot. Italy and Spain have common interests in Europe; to squander the understanding over the Ceuta affair – a mass swimming crossing of young people resulting in a hundred deaths, which would have warranted solidarity and a request for repatriation from the island of Lampedusa, but not the closure of the Schengen Area – is a bizarre mistake, a propaganda cry that echoes like a gigantic belch. Madrid’s retaliation is yet another example of a haphazard response, a petty Castilian act of vengeance that makes matters worse and even damages bilateral tourism flows. This is perhaps the least significant detail. But Sánchez’s stance on everything – on arms, on peace, on Gaza, on the Palestinians, on Israel, on the bases for Iran – is little short of a sham; it is he who is teaching everyone how anti-war rhetoric and the logic of surrender can be bent to serve propaganda purposes, even in the face of a pogrom, and the Spanish know exactly what that means.

The Italian government has made a serious mistake, playing into the hands of various forms of jingoistic ramblings, both Italian and Spanish, which Europe – given the grotesque situation it has got itself into – certainly did not need. They should have listened to Tajani, the wise and level-headed Foreign Secretary, rather than Salvini, the Transport Secretary who treats foreign policy like a joke and whose lasting legacy is that famous pro-Ukraine rally (a hoax) in which he was made a laughing stock in front of the world’s cameras by flashing his Putin T-shirt – that same Salvini who is undermining Piantedosi, the Home Secretary, and seeks to undermine him in order to take centre stage in the League’s now hopelessly losing election campaign. Politics can do many things—crude and even despicable things—but it must not go against the interests of the state, nor must it undermine one of the Meloni government’s key achievements: the establishment of a conservative immigration policy – far removed from the donkey-like braying of the MAGAs and the most abject Trumpism, and closer to genuine hegemony within a pro-European Union landscape rife with populism and demagoguery of various kinds.

Mistakes can be corrected. It is never too late. Insisting and persevering can prove to be diabolical and counterproductive in every respect. On the issue of immigration, Meloni has faced an insidious enemy: the judiciary, which has taken to feigning libertarian humanism by exploiting the fears of others – not Spain. And within the European Union in Brussels, she has – or had – a valuable ally. Sacrificing this reality on the altar of propaganda does not reflect a professional approach to national governance, which is the least fleeting aspect of the Meloni experience: the right-wing leadership of the coalition with the centrists of Forza Italia and the extremists of the Salvini camp, who have everything to gain – they, at least, from a fallacious hardening of the anti-immigration platform, right up to the legitimisation of the appalling ‘remigration’ policy trumpeted by the reactionary press. ‘Forward march’? No, ‘full retreat’ should be the watchword.