Give credit where credit is due: Meloni attended his school

A political tribute to Berlusconi is called for. Nobody talks about him any more in terms of his political legacy, which is utterly unfair. Not because of his various eccentricities and oddities, but because of his political journey – yes, such a tribute is essential. Meloni did not exist politically without ‘Il Cav.’, under whom she cut her teeth in government. Indeed, she is someone who rebelled—without fanfare or public renunciation—against the ultimate political project of the Forza Italia leader, leaving the Polo della Libertà and striking out on her own with a handful of people; she then embarked on a long period of opposition to governments of which her former ally was a part, amidst public and personal upheaval and turmoil, ultimately emerging as the ‘maiden of the centre-right’, in a sensational electoral campaign that earned her the leadership of a long-lasting government. 

Indeed, it has lasted quite a long time so far, which does not in itself make it an eternal power, given that the only historical contender for that role, Giulio Andreotti, headed the shortest-lived government in our history – a mere seven days – but was also, for decades, the protégé and architect of a Christian Democrat regime that lasted longer than the famous twenty-year period. Meloni could – though it is by no means certain – win the next general election with her centre-right alliance. Since no regime exists any longer, thanks to the Berlusconi era, her government and her coalition are more than vulnerable to the winds of change. The fact is that the ingredients of her success are exactly the same as those laid down by Berlusconi when he decided to enter politics, embodying the spirit of political alternation. Brought into the mainstream, as they used to say at the time, by the businessman who knew nothing about politics but possessed formidable personal intuition, the right has transformed itself into a common commodity, appealing to a majority and not rejected by the European and Western establishment, and it has done so by its own means. But it all began with Berlusconi’s famous remark in the supermarket in Casalecchio di Reno – ‘I would vote for Fini without hesitation’ – which, for many years, transformed ‘Il Cav.’, a natural moderate and a Christian Democrat by training, into the ‘Black Knight’ of liberal nightmares.

Meloni is prickly, but with Salvini she manages to put into practice the ‘concave and convex’ technique that Berlusconi used to boast about but did not always apply properly (the row with Bossi, then Fini). She has weathered ‘Putinism’ and various other opposing currents with style, swimming, as she puts it, ‘in glue’, without compromising on the substance of her opposing choices regarding alliances and national and European security. Today, her opponents appear spellbound by the unprecedented cohesion of a coalition that could have broken up or fatally fractured at any moment during its time in government. This, too, is a product of the realistic sense of necessity that allowed ‘Il Cav.’ to bring together Northern League members and the ‘black’ faction by associating them with a liberal-style umbrella party – a rather resilient structure. Meloni is not the ‘excuse me’ type; she often speaks bluntly, flaunts her working-class identity like a trophy, and shuns the lure of respectability – a trait that was, by contrast, a defining feature of her original mentor. But for both of them, the important thing was, and remains, to make themselves understood. In short, she is not Berlusconi’s protégée, but she did learn from him, and Berlusconi, deep down, in his wise madness, was a true political pioneer. Not least because he might well be out of a job tomorrow, given that the old regime is no more and has been replaced by political alternation; the enduring liberal ‘Ducia’ is the Berlusconian ‘new, great Italian miracle’.