In Fazzolari’s office. Interview with the undersecretary, Meloni’s right-hand man

Giorgia Meloni at the Quirinale? “I don’t think that’s among her ambitions. At some point, I imagine she’ll be the most suitable candidate, but certainly not in 2028.” Giovanbattista Fazzolari, Under-Secretary to the Prime Minister, who has been in daily contact with the Prime Minister since long before she moved into Palazzo Chigi, envisages the next Head of State as “conservative but as inclusive as possible”, and reckons that the left, whoever is chosen, “will cry scandal anyway”. Meloni, on the other hand, remains where she is, and where, in his view, she has become “the first Prime Minister of the Third Republic”. Is she irreplaceable at the helm of Fratelli d’Italia too? “As things stand, no one is as complete as she is, not just within Fratelli d’Italia”. The challenger in the elections? “The secretary of the PD, Elly Schlein, because that’s how it works in coalitions, when they’re not just electoral alliances: the head of the party with the most votes is the leader.” Vannacci? “He’s just like Giuseppe Conte; we don’t form alliances with those who view politics in an opportunistic way.” And when will the vote take place? “It doesn’t depend solely on us. But there are two possible natural deadlines: one at the end of the five-year term, so in September, and the other in June, which would give the next government leeway to draw up the budget bill at its leisure.” So perhaps June is preferable for the government. And that’s news. Any fears of foreign interference in the vote? “The risk is very real; Russian disinformation is at work in Italy too.” Are there any of Putin’s agents in our political sphere? “No, just low-level opportunists.” What does Ranucci represent to you? “The classic hypocrite who lectures others but then gets caught out in embarrassing situations.” And with the electoral law due to be approved today, what will change? “The aim is to have more stable governments and clearly defined coalitions; this will probably polarise the vote between the two main alliances.” Possible outcome: Vannacci’s influence will be curtailed.

Seen from the inside, the ground floor of Palazzo Chigi has the air of a residence that has seen better days and worse tastes, with gilded inlays which, with all due respect to the institutions of the Republic, would not look out of place in an Instagram series on ‘tacky homes’. Peeling doors and a yellowish marble that seems to have long since given up on aspiring to be white. Fazzolari says: “For too long, this Palazzo has been nothing more than a place of passage.” And it shows. The office of the Under-Secretary to the Prime Minister, by contrast, is as bare as an office that has just been handed over. On the walls hang a beautiful world map and a seascape so faded that the sea looks as though it has been calm for a century, whilst on top of a cupboard stand models of a tank, a submarine and an aeroplane – land, sea and sky on a small scale. On a shelf, near the television, sits a small plastic fox. “I was given it as a present.” It is tempting to ask him if he considers himself the fox himself. “I don’t think so,” he smiles faintly. Fazzolari is wearing dark grey trousers and a sky-blue shirt, and halfway through the interview he is interrupted by a phone call. “Excuse me, this is an emergency,” he says. It’s Enel. You picture the chief executive, an energy dossier, some issue of national interest to be resolved between one government building and another. Instead, it’s the switchboard. And the serious matter is the connection of the electricity meter at home, which the undersecretary follows through with the involvement of an ordinary customer right up to the final sigh of relief: “Brilliant, excellent, thank you.”

It is the most persuasive introduction one could hope for to the argument close to his heart, namely that Palazzo Chigi is by no means a seat of power. “Being at Palazzo Chigi is much harder than it seems from the outside. When you walk into a place, you realise straight away whether it is a seat of power or not. There’s not much you can do about it. Historically, this has been a place of mediation, of reconciliation. Everything tells you that.” A place of passage, in fact, and that is how it was, he points out, “until the arrival of a government that has already lasted four years”. So when Pietro Nenni is mentioned – who entered the control room and realised there were no controls – Fazzolari laughs. “We arrived here convinced we had much greater capacity for action. A decision is made in the Council of Ministers, but it’s not true that you then have the full scope to carry it out. That’s how it’s always been. Then one tries to change things. Today, Palazzo Chigi carries more weight than before and coordinates the decisions of individual ministries more effectively. Meloni, with her authority, has effectively established a prime ministerial role, and that is why I say she is the first Prime Minister of the Third Republic”. Any regrets? Missed opportunities? “Not having been able to implement a series of measures due to the state of public finances left to us by our predecessors.” Is there one failure you cannot forgive yourself for? “I can’t think of any specific one.” Impossible. “It means there are several, but none of them has particularly got me down.”

The tone becomes more scathing when the discussion turns to Roberto Vannacci, the general elected with the Lega who has since joined his own party, Futuro Nazionale. “I find his pro-Russian stance very insincere. If he were an agent paid by the Kremlin, he would at least be consistent. But he isn’t.” He and the Five Star Movement, Fazzolari argues, are vying for the support of Italians who do not want to hear anything about Ukraine, with a willingness to adapt that knows no bounds. “If tomorrow it were to suit them to argue that Lithuania should invade St Petersburg, they would support a Lithuanian invasion of St Petersburg.” As for the MPs who have left the centre-right to follow Vannacci, “coincidentally, they are all politicians who had little chance of being re-nominated”, including “former undersecretaries in the Draghi government who are now posing as representatives of the true right”. For Fazzolari, the comparison is with Meloni in 2012, who turned down a high-profile post offered by Berlusconi to found a party destined to secure 1.95 per cent in the general election. “We are the exact opposite.” And the by-elections in Reggio Calabria, in his view, have settled the matter. “You’re the party of rupture and you stand with a seasoned centrist figure? You come in to change everything, and to change everything you take on a ‘preference baron’. This is a pattern straight out of the First Republic.” The conclusion, therefore, is final. “I see no difference whatsoever between Vannacci and Giuseppe Conte. They’re like the Barbapapas, to quote Giorgia, because they change shape depending on what suits them. And we don’t form alliances with those who act like that.” The polls putting the general at 7 or 8 per cent, or even 10 per cent, do not trouble him all that much: “The new electoral law will give a strong push to concentrate votes on the two camps; the reform has a polarising logic. Moreover, the past offers comfort: it is not the first time that someone has tried to orchestrate a move to dismantle the centre-right from the right. Angelino Alfano, at the start, when he formed his party, was predicted to get 10 per cent and then failed. Fini, when he split from the PDL, was predicted to get 8.5 per cent and then ended up with 0.4 per cent. Positioning oneself to our right is complicated, for the simple reason that many of us come from the Youth Front. They can give it a go. Good luck.”

In short, Fazzolari reiterates, the objection to Vannacci is not that he is pro-Russian “because that would mean taking him seriously. And there is nothing serious about the way he presents himself”.

On the subject of Ukraine, Fazzolari offers a historian’s perspective, and the lesson begins with a timeline that does little credit to Europe. “It is not true that Europe took a stand straight away. When the war broke out, the Western European states kept a low profile, expecting a rapid collapse of Ukraine and perhaps a sort of ‘Crimea all over again’. Everyone except Boris Johnson.” While Johnson took a stand immediately and the heads of government of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia rushed to Kyiv, the famous trip by Macron, Draghi and Scholz did not take place until June, says Fazzolari, by which time it was already clear that Kyiv would not fall. “In the history books, Giorgia Meloni will be mentioned alongside Johnson. Italians struggle to understand that what is happening in Ukraine concerns them directly. Given this climate of public opinion, Meloni could have positioned Italy however she wished, and if she had chosen, for the sake of convenience, to take a detached stance, she would have gained public support. And a different stance from Italy would probably have created a domino effect across Europe. If the European Union remains so resolute, it is because what some considered the weak link has held firm.”

Fazzolari counters the idea of a round-table discussion with the opposition, modelled on Macron’s approach, by pointing to the Quirinale. “Support for Ukraine is a matter of national interest. And this is made clear by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who has always shown great resolve on the issue of Ukraine. And anyone wishing to change Italy’s position would have to deal with him first, even before dealing with Meloni.” Speaking of Mattarella, who would be the next president if it were up to you to elect one? “I don’t think it’s far-fetched to imagine a figure from a conservative background, whom Italians recognise as possessing balance and the ability to act in the nation’s best interests.” Meloni at the Quirinale? “I certainly don’t think so in 2028, but, given how young she is, who knows in the future…”. And you need her in the party. “It would be hard to imagine any other leader.” There’s a problem with the leadership in Fratelli d’Italia. “Absolutely not.” Milan, Rome and Naples are governed by the left. “In the last local elections, it was difficult to find candidates from Fratelli d’Italia who were well-known enough to be competitive. But there’s plenty of talent in our ranks.” You’re a rather closed party. “I wouldn’t say so. We’ve been open to other spheres, and Raffaele Fitto, Giulio Tremonti, Marcello Pera, Giulio Terzi, Carlo Nordio and many others have been elected on Fratelli d’Italia’s lists.” It’s been reported that you won’t be re-nominating Nordio. “Let’s not be ridiculous.” Let’s get back to Russia, though. Are there any of Putin’s men in Italian politics? “I see nothing but opportunistic manoeuvring by political forces trying to capitalise on the issue, without having the guts to see it through to the end.” There has been talk of the risk of Russian interference in the upcoming elections. “The risk is very real, but it doesn’t concern postal voting, as some have suggested, because postal voting is extremely limited and has almost no impact. The danger lies in disinformation. There are parties and political leaders in Italy who offer simple, demagogic answers to questions and demands deliberately created by disinformation.” And when will we go to the polls? “If the electoral law is passed – in other words, if we do not vote immediately because the government falls – there are two options: September, at the natural expiry date, or June. The second option would allow us to return to the normal electoral cycle and enable the new government to draw up the budget bill with a degree of calm.” Voting in the autumn “would mean repeating what this government found itself having to do in 2022, with the first budget drafted in a matter of days and without giving Parliament the usual time to assess it”. Both scenarios remain on the table; it depends on the stability of the majority, and the decision, he points out, “is not up to us”. We shall see.

At one point during the interview, Fazzolari, sitting on a small black sofa, asks for a break; someone offers to fetch a round of coffee, and on their return the undersecretary explains that in that room, gifts – plastic trinkets, of course – arrive with some regularity, including a fox figurine. Among the gifts, however, there is no bust of Mussolini, we tell him provocatively – the one that Ignazio La Russa, President of the Senate, kept in his study as a family heirloom. You, Fazzolari, on the other hand, once told me you had not read Evola. “It’s true, I preferred to read other things.” La Russa and his contemporaries, the old guard of the MSI, used to call them “the youngsters” – people like Meloni and Fazzolari – and for a while they treated them accordingly. “It wasn’t easy at first, because it wasn’t straightforward to accept a very young Giorgia presenting herself as a leader. Recently, I watched some footage from the time Fratelli d’Italia was founded, and she really did look like a child. Perhaps I’ve grown older, but I understand that at the time it wasn’t easy to take her seriously. That’s another reason why it was a very courageous decision on Ignazio’s part to found the party with this young woman as its leader.” Why don’t you remove the flame from the symbol, then? “It’s part of our journey.” These shifts, he assures us, have always been declared openly, one party congress after another, one assembly after another. First, the party founded to save a right wing destined to disappear; then the party of patriots – “and I remember how much we were mocked; it was a completely obsolete term” – and finally the home of the conservatives, “with an electorate that now extends far beyond the right. And we’re perfectly aware of that.” The phone rings again, and this time it’s not the electricity company. “It’s my mother; I have to answer that.” The Under-Secretary explains that he’s at work, promises to ring her back later, hangs up and admits he’s lost his train of thought. We pick up the thread with Sigfrido Ranucci, the presenter of Report. He’s been suspended for ten days. But is it true that you want him sacked? “No. And if we’d been able to choose based on our own interests, it would have suited us for Ranucci to have stayed on as presenter. But I realise that, for any serious organisation, it would have been complicated.” So what’s the problem? “The method. The anonymous informant. You pick someone, stuff a meatball in their mouth, hood them and make them say whatever you like. It might be acceptable once in a while, if you’ve caught the head of a mafia clan on the run in the mountains. But as a rule, in public service broadcasting, no. I doubt the BBC works like that. I took issue with Ranucci because he broadcast a witness with his face obscured, who claimed that I had organised a meeting at Palazzo Chigi to get involved in the banking scandal. In short, they were accusing me of a crime. Well, if the undersecretary has committed a crime, it’s right to report it – of course – but not with such carelessness. And do you know what the other, almost comical paradox is?” No, go on. “That to defend myself I have to sue the RAI, not Ranucci. And the RAI, using public money from the licence fee that I also pay, is pitting all its lawyers against me. In short, I’m paying for my own lawyer and theirs as well.” And what about the secret service story? “Ranucci goes to the European Parliament, to the most high-profile venue possible, and claims that I had him followed by the secret services. Politics aside, there’s a question of jurisdiction: I don’t have the power to call them in. And even if I did, I wouldn’t waste time and public resources on someone as insignificant as him. I wrote this in a press release, and I think it made him absolutely furious. I announced that I would be claiming damages, but then I dropped the matter. In an interview, I was asked why, and I replied that, if I’d sued him, they’d have accused me of intimidating the free press, and if I hadn’t, they’d have said the allegations were well-founded. And sure enough, the chorus began: ‘Fazzolari isn’t taking action because he has something to hide’. So, I filed the claim for damages. The first hearing is in December, and there Ranucci will have to explain what source he had to back up what he said. Unless, of course, it’s some hooded figure with a meatball in his mouth – but I hope that won’t count in court.” What’s your take on the Ranucci affair, the bomb, and Lavitola? “The great moraliser exposed with all the very weaknesses he used to look for in others. The classic hypocrite caught out in embarrassing situations’. And what should be done about the RAI? “I’d start with a serious discussion on the possibility of scaling back its scope, perhaps by privatising part of it, to optimise its role as a public service. But it’s a complex issue that needs to be considered carefully”. With the reform, could the chief executive, Giampaolo Rossi, stay on? “It’s far too early to talk about that. But I’m very fortunate: dealing with such matters isn’t one of my responsibilities.” That leaves your personal future. A ministerial post in the government Meloni would form following another victory? “We’ve been a close-knit team for a very long time. I’ll do whatever’s needed, even though I detest high-profile roles. Certainly, the quality of life for those who do not hold government posts is significantly better.” Do you hope to lose the election? “Look, let me put it this way: if there’s anyone who can do better than us, I’ll vote for them too. But at the moment, unfortunately, I don’t see any major alternatives.”