For subscribers
Drama has cost populists more votes than incompetence
Demagogues can’t see that most people want a quiet life between elections
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Italian PM Giorgia Meloni has had to curb her euroscepticism and shed some of her populist positions to get and hold power.
PHOTO: AFP
Janan Ganesh
Follow topic:
Consider, in this month of goodwill, the loneliness of Ms Giorgia Meloni. The Italian Prime Minister is the only head of government in a G-7 country who can be described without lurid exaggeration as a populist. She has seen the British swap Mr Boris Johnson for a slightly bloodless Goldman Sachs alumnus. She has seen the Americans give a Beltway insider of half-a-century’s standing good Midterm election results for a sitting president.
Outside the richest democracies, she sees a Brazil without Mr Jair Bolsonaro on top of it. And Ms Meloni, don’t forget, is herself a kind of apostate of the right.
