Meloni the consistent one: AfD’s success is down to “political horse-trading”

The problem is ‘political horse-trading’ and ‘consistency’ is the antidote. This is Meloni’s view on the election in Saxony, Germany. The far right is at loggerheads with the ‘respectable’ right, and to label a population that votes for the AfD – with over forty per cent of the vote – as ‘Nazi’ is ‘absurd’. Meloni tells her supporters: “They did the same to us in Italy. I cannot stand those who seek to dictate to voters.” The rise of the fanatical right? It is down to left-wing policies, the misguided green agenda, and those broad coalition governments—right-left—which in the past have drained both Forza Italia and the Lega. Meloni is saying that what happened to Chancellor Merz is “the curse of those who form unnatural, patchwork governments”. If an election is needed in the spring, in March – and she is increasingly convinced that it is – the vote will be held, with all due respect to Salvini, on the residual legacy of the longest-serving government.

Meloni’s challenge is not Alternative für Deutschland, but rather finding an alternative to Salvini, who quips in reply: “When is the election? At the end of the parliamentary term, in autumn 2027. We’re not here to set records; Kimi Antonelli does that.” To offset the decline in support for the Lega and Forza Italia, Meloni is launching Forza Meloni and Lega per Giorgia. FdI is expanding; it is playing the role of the ‘super-party’ that must reach thirty per cent and encompass the entire spectrum of the centre-right. During her meeting with Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, Meloni spoke of borders and the Schengen Area, because “I remain firmly convinced that the Schengen Area can only be preserved in the best possible way if the EU’s external borders are defended, and only if all Member States continue to play their part in the fight against traffickers and mass illegal immigration”. She cannot bear the idea of the AfD’s victory being replicated in Italy, with Vannacci, just as FdI cannot bear it either. The rise of the AfD is portrayed in a different light. Galeazzo Bignami explains to Il Foglio: “When voters choose the alternative to the left, and that alternative forms an alliance with the left, they simply stop voting for it because, clearly, it was not a genuine alternative to the left. I believe this is why Giorgia Meloni is polling highly; she is because she has never allied herself with the left.” There is a note from FdI on the German election, drafted by Fazzolari’s successor, Francesco Filini, the head of the think tank; it is the traditional ‘vote analysis’ that rigorous parties (where is the PD’s?) used to produce. It is clearly an internal document, but it is one that speaks for the majority party. The note states that “the Germans are sending a message against ‘coalition-of-convenience’ governments” and “are tired of seeing multicoloured governments, with strong ideological overtones, capable of producing wokism and failed green deals”.

Meloni’s entire narrative from Bari onwards will revolve around the word ‘consistency’. Another of Meloni’s statements is being circulated amongst MPs: ‘The only coalitions that can provide answers are those built not against someone, but for something’. The statement reiterates that “Meloni has never accepted compromises with the left and has always refused to enter government with forces that had nothing to do with her programme”. Meloni reiterates that Vannacci (the general is organising his ‘Contro Pontida’ event in Orvieto with Professor Cesare Pozzi of LUISS; Michele Geraci, Conte’s Chinese friend; Massimo Magliaro, the former deputy director of TG1, a symbol of the right, and Piero Sansonetti) is ‘incompatible’ with the programme and that the red line is Russia. The analysis of the Saxony vote contains a significant passage that foreshadows the future: ‘The result of the German vote is a message that no politician can ignore. Citizens have grown tired of political backroom dealings’. There is a renewed push for an electoral law to prevent technocratic governments, but it is pointed out that “the AfD, despite the landslide of votes, has not secured an absolute majority and, to govern, will have to form alliances or even bring the left into government”. This is a way of emphasising that only a vote for the right – for the credible coalition – can avert a political free-for-all, but it is also a call to polarise. The international agenda at the moment is as follows: in mid-September, Meloni could fly to Oslo for a bilateral meeting. Only Salvini and Tajani have failed to grasp that Meloni’s real objective is to come first, to make FdI the leading party – a party that could refuse to enter into agreements and preserve its purity. It is this refusal that is the privilege.