Four years, so many regrets

Four years is a long time for a government, and you are forced to take stock, wondering whether you might have missed the opportunity presented by the length of time that has passed. It is better to regret than to have regrets. Giorgia Meloni may well have several regrets for not having seized the opportunity that lay before her: to firmly occupy the moderate centre of a large part of the electorate – albeit with an eye towards the right – with an institutional stance that has long been missing from Italian politics. This is compounded by an opposition—the so-called ‘broad coalition’, which is in reality little more than a five-a-side football pitch, or rather a four-and-a-half-a-side one—that has kindly confined itself to a corner, leaving endless motorways wide open for you. She did try, of course. Fiscal discipline, Ukraine and dialogue with the much-maligned EU are all there to prove she gave it a go. But when you’ve spent twenty years seeing yourself on the barricades, forgetting all common sense, the past catches up with you. And so you zigzag from one side to the other. Until a Vannacci comes along and catches you in the middle of the ford. What do you do? Do you turn back? Or do you regret not having crossed that ford?