Meloni, following Trump: “We need a right wing that doesn’t shout”

Rome. They were only ‘Trumpians’ back then. Trump, who? In America, everything has changed; in Italy, nothing: the right is playing dumb, whilst the left is already smitten with Jon Ossoff, the senator who won in Georgia. Listen to Tajani: “I’ve never been a MAGA supporter”; Vannacci’s deputy, Edoardo Ziello: “We’ve never been Trump supporters”; and the League’s Candiani: “Trump? Who even knows him?”. Meloni is saying: “The lesson from America is that we need a right wing that doesn’t rant, doesn’t shout, doesn’t provoke – a solid right wing”. Trump’s defeat in the mid-term elections is having an effect: Meloni is weighing up the cost of holding an election in May, and on 12 and 13 November she will travel to Dublin for the informal European Council, where she promises she will “get proper angry” with Europe – a Europe that has failed to appoint an envoy to negotiate with Putin. The real disaster for the right is that it can neither lament nor celebrate. And it would very much like to celebrate.

Trump’s defeat was on the cards, and the Italian reaction was predictable. When the result became clear on Tuesday night and the US map turned a shade of Democratic blue, sources say Meloni was left with a bitter taste in her mouth – not so much because she was unhappy (far from it, in fact), but simply because she could not throw open the windows of the Palazzo and shout out into the square: ‘How we miss Biden’. Was it not the Democrat Biden who had embraced her? According to sources, whenever someone reproaches her for that attempt to tame the Beast, Meloni, the Beauty, recalls her duty: “I have always acted in Italy’s interests, and only those. It is unthinkable not to have relations with America.” Meloni has it in for Europe. She has it in for those who are now lecturing her for having distanced herself from Macron and Merz.

He will attend the next ‘Volenterosi’ summit in person in Berlin. In an internal FdI memo, the line shared by Fazzolari and Francesco Filini is that ‘the left has pathetically tried to take credit for yet another victory that is not its own, drawing fanciful parallels with the Meloni government’. Why is Trump losing? FdI’s view is that all Western governments are grappling with “high energy prices, high fuel costs and rising inflation”, which, paradoxically, is causing a drop in support – with the exception of Italy. It is a tug-of-war between FdI, which still commands 27.8 per cent of the vote, and the PD, which remains at 20 per cent. Sara Kelany – who, alongside Fazzolari, Filini, Osnato and Lucaselli, helped form and develop a group of promising young people when FdI was just a tiny party – says that “our government has never been subservient to Trump, and that our relations with Biden were excellent. If we were to look at it objectively, we’d have to say that this result helps us.” Simonetta Matone, who switched from the Lega to Forza Italia, has finally shaken off that weight she’d been carrying: “I never liked that MAGA nonsense – it’s utter rubbish.”

Consider that she was even forced to appear on television to defend that boor—she, Matone, who wears genuine jewellery, detests uncouth people, and reads Proust in the evenings. Even Fabio Rampelli, the FdI ‘seagull’ and Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, has never been a fan of Trump (he’s always said so, even when Trump was invincible); he says he was thrilled when ‘a woman, one metre sixty tall, replied to him: “You must act in the interests of Western civilisation”’. No League members are currently visible on the campaign trail, and the few still active are discussing Armed Forces Day or the 25 senators’ signatures required to remove Romeo as Senate group leader (Calderoli’s is missing). They are discussing a party that does not yet exist and that even Meloni dreams of – a party including Giorgetti, Garavaglia and Fontana, something that might offset the crisis in the League and in Forza Italia. One might argue that boorish Trump has done Meloni a favour by allowing her to distance herself, but what about Salvini? He had even begun wearing Trump’s red tie, and is now shifting his allegiance to Vance, stating: “I hope Trump makes good use of this vote and hastens the end of the conflicts.”

Analysing the election result, Meloni noted that this is proof that American democracy is robust and that the MAGA world has collapsed, but she also noted that the right must rethink itself; it must be a credible right: no more MAGA rubbish, no more caps like the one Tajani picked up (though it was Meloni who sent him to America). It would be a right-wing movement a world away from Vannacci. The only connection Meloni sees with America is that it is the bully right that has come out of this battered, and that at the same time we must be wary of this American trend. Sara Ferrari, a PD MP, has spoken out again about ‘woke’, and if you ask FdI MPs which Democrat frightens them, they’ll tell you: ‘Talarico used a phrase straight out of Marxism, straight out of the Soviet Union: “The only dangerous minorities are billionaires.”’

Behind the scenes, the government is weighing up its options. It wants to assess whether it can approach President Mattarella and ask him to call an election in May, thereby avoiding a ‘Election Day’ coinciding with local elections. Trump’s unpredictability is another variable. For months, the Foreign Office has been advising against travel to the Middle East, whilst figures such as Minister Zangrillo are dismissing the spectre of the red briefcase used by Trump: “The outcome of the mid-term elections is the clearest response to those who for years have claimed that American democracy is in decline. The people have spoken; they have made their views known. And I would add that, whether it is Trump, Bush or Obama, America is our staunch ally and must remain so.” And what if Trump attacks Iran? “I am certain – or at least I hope – that this negative vote will not push Trump towards reckless decisions. That would, of course, be a risk for everyone.” There are still two years left of Trump. It’s not over yet, but at least in Italy, his ties are already going on sale.