Month: September 2022

Ms Meloni is widely expected to form Italy’s most right-wing government since World War Two.

That will alarm much of Europe as Italy is the EU’s third-biggest economy.

However, speaking after the vote, Ms Meloni said her Brothers of Italy party would “govern for everyone” and would not betray people’s trust.

“Italians have sent a clear message in favour of a right-wing government led by Brothers of Italy,” she told reporters in Rome, holding up a sign saying “Thank you Italy”.

She is predicted to win up to 26% of the vote, based on provisional results, ahead of her closest rival Enrico Letta from the centre left.

Ms Meloni’s right-wing alliance – which also includes Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and former PM Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia – now looks to have control of both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, with around 44% of the vote.

Her own party’s dramatic success in the vote disguised the fact that her allies performed poorly, with Mr Salvini’s party slipping below 9%, and Forza Italia even lower. Four years ago, Brothers of Italy won little more than 4% of the vote but this time benefited from staying out of the national unity government that collapsed in July.

The decision on who becomes Italy’s next leader is up to the president, Sergio Mattarella, and that will take time.

Although Giorgia Meloni has worked hard to soften her image, emphasising her support for Ukraine and diluting anti-EU rhetoric, she leads a party rooted in a post-war movement that rose out of dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascists.

Earlier this year she outlined her priorities in a raucous speech to Spain’s far-right Vox party: “Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology… no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration… no to big international finance… no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!”

The centre-left alliance was a long way behind the right with 26% of the vote and Democratic Party figure Debora Serracchiani said it was a sad evening for Italy. The right “has the majority in parliament, but not in the country”, she insisted.

The left failed to form a viable challenge with other parties after Italy’s 18-month unity government fell apart, and officials were downbeat even before the vote. The Five Star Movement under Giuseppe Conte won a convincing third place – but does not see eye to eye with Enrico Letta even though they have several policies in common on immigration and raising the minimum wage.

Turnout fell to a record low of 63.91% – nine points down on 2018. Voting levels were especially poor in southern regions including Sicily.

Italy is a founding father of the European Union and a member of Nato, and Ms Meloni’s rhetoric on the EU places her close to Hungary’s nationalist leader Viktor Orban.

Her allies have both had close ties with Russia. Mr Berlusconi, 85, claimed last week that Vladimir Putin was pushed into invading Ukraine while Mr Salvini has called into question Western sanctions on Moscow.

Ms Meloni wants to revisit Italian reforms agreed with the EU in return for almost €200bn (£178bn) in post-Covid recovery grants and loans, arguing that the energy crisis has changed the situation.

The Hungarian prime minister’s long-serving political director, Balazs Orban, was quick to congratulate Italy’s right-wing parties: “We need more than ever friends who share a common vision and approach to Europe’s challenges.”

In France, Jordan Bardella of the far-right National Rally said Italian voters had given European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen a lesson in humility. She had earlier said Europe had “the tools” to respond if Italy went in a “difficult direction”.

However, Prof Gianluca Passarrelli of Rome’s Sapienza University told the BBC he thought she would avoid rocking the boat on Europe and focus on other policies: “I think we will see more restrictions on civil rights and policies on LGBT and immigrants.”

Mr Salvini will be hoping to return to the interior ministry to halt migrant boats crossing from Libya.

This election marks a one-third reduction in the size of the two houses, and that appears to have benefited the winning parties.

A Rai TV exit poll suggested the three parties will hold 227-257 seats in the revamped 400-seat Chamber and 111-131 seats out of a total of 200 seats in the Senate. Mr Salvini said the right had a clear advantage in both houses.

The same Rai poll also reveals just how dominant the Meloni-led coalition is likely to be. The centre left will hold a mere 78-98 seats in the Chamber and 33-53 in the Senate, it says.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said healthcare workers do not want to see longer waiting times and cancelled appointments, but told BBC Scotland they may be forced to act.

Unite is balloting NHS members on industrial action after a 5% pay increase was turned down last month.

She called on the Scottish government to table a “decent” pay offer.

The union said it had amassed a £50m strike fund.

“Strikes are a last resort but obviously I will back my members where they want to take that action,” Ms Graham said.

She insisted that union members “don’t want the consequences” of the pressure on services that strike action would bring.

It comes as Scotland reported its worst ever A&E waiting times last week, and the cost of living crisis is expected to place further strain on hospitals this winter.

She said: “It’s not very often that you get people in the NHS going out on strike. That is the reality, it’s a huge thing for them to do.

“But on the other side of that argument, you’ve got people with families, you’ve got people who can’t feed their families.”

Ms Graham pointed to a Unite survey that suggests more than 152,000 people (24%) in Glasgow are living in food poverty, while more than 82,000 (13%) cannot afford pay their household bills.

“People feel that they are in food poverty right this moment – they can’t afford to take any more pay cuts.

“Of course we don’t want that sort of disruption, so I would say to the respective governments come to the table and put decent pay offers down.”

Healthcare staff from Unite and four other unions are being balloted on industrial action after rejecting the Scottish government’s pay deal.

Unison, GMB, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy also condemned the 5% offer.

Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said: “While we respect the mandate given to trade unions, I am disappointed they voted to reject the record 5% pay deal for NHS Scotland Agenda for Change staff, and are now holding ballots for industrial action.

“We are re-engaging with Trade Unions in the hope of reaching a satisfactory outcome.”

Ms Graham, who spoke to BBC Scotland at Unite’s Scottish policy conference in Glasgow, also took aim at Prime Minister Liz Truss over the UK government’s mini-budget last week

She said the tax cuts for the most wealthy in England and Wales represent a “bonanza for the rich”.

The union leader was also asked her view on a second Scottish independence referendum.

She said: “I don’t think the general secretary in London should be telling people in Scotland what they should or shouldn’t be doing on indyref2.

“In the first instance that’s my Scottish members who will tell me that and from there the Scottish people will decide.”

John McDonnell is backing a proposed change to Labour’s position on the UK’s voting system.

At Labour’s conference, he said policy decisions were taken democratically and “no-one is above that”.

But Sir Keir has said electoral reform was not a priority under his leadership.

The Labour leader is facing increasing pressure to drop the party’s historical support for the first-past-the-post voting system used for general elections in the UK.

MPs from all wings of the party have been urging him to instead embrace some level of proportional representation.

Proportional representation, or PR, is the idea that the seats in Parliament should reflect the number of votes cast.

Democracies around the world use various polling methods that ensure that voters feel their vote counts – in some cases it is simply that they indicate a second-choice candidate that they can show their backing for once their preferred choice is out of the running. This is not strictly proportional representation but is often put forward by supporters of PR as a fairer method of representing voters’ wishes.

The Labour for a New Democracy campaign wants the leadership to back the introduction of PR its next election manifesto.

Labour members are set to debate support for this at Labour’s conference in Liverpool, where the proposal will be voted on this week.

But Labour sources have suggested that PR will not be put in the manifesto, even if members vote for it at conference.

In an interview with the Observer newspaper this week, Sir Keir suggested he would not put a pledge for electoral reform in Labour’s manifesto.

Appearing at a pro-PR rally organised by Labour for a New Democracy, Mr McDonnell said he had seen Sir Keir’s comments.

“I think we just have to remind, as gently as we can, that all our decisions are taken democratically,” Mr McDonnell said.

“I think Keir’s been mixing with the royalty too much for the last few days. He’s not a feudal monarchy.

“He’s an elected leader of the party, accountable to the party and accountable to all of us.

“We have a democratic structure by which we determine those decisions. I hope that we’ll be able to reflect that in a constructive dialogue.”

He said he was confident PR would be in the party’s manifesto by the next annual conference.

Mr McDonnell was one of the architects of Labour’s 2017 and 2019 election manifestos under previous leader, left-wing MP Jeremy Corbyn.

The BBC has asked Labour for comment on Mr McDonnell’s remarks.

Other Labour MPs appeared at the event to show their support for the motion to include PR in the next manifesto.

Among them was Stephen Kinnock, who said PR had “such a force of logic and clear rationality in terms of why it is the right thing to do”.

“There is a basic democratic argument which is that every vote should count equally,” Mr Kinnock said.

The MP for Nottingham East, Nadia Whittome, said the campaign for PR “has united all tendencies of the Labour Party, different parts of the left, the right and the centre”.

“This isn’t about where we come from in the party, it’s about building a more democratic society,” she said.

At last year’s conference, about 80% of constituency party delegates voted in favour of embracing PR.

The proposal was defeated after unions opposed the move.

Since then, three of the biggest five unions linked to Labour have changed their stance, putting pressure on the party’s leadership to follow suit.

He was caught on a hot mic and seen on camera seemingly calling US lawmakers a Korean word that can be translated as “idiots” or something much stronger.

The footage quickly went viral in South Korea.

But his spokeswoman says he had “no reason to talk about the US or utter the word ‘Biden'”.

The remark is said to have occurred as part of a conversation about Mr Biden’s drive to increase the US contribution to a global initiative known as the Global Fund, which would require congressional approval.

“How could Biden not lose face if these [expletive] do not pass it in Congress?,” Mr Yoon apparently said to his aides afterwards.

Presidential spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said in New York on Thursday Mr Yoon did not actually say “Biden”, but a similar-sounding Korean word, and that he was referring to the South Korean parliament, not the US Congress.

Many were unconvinced by the government’s defence – an opposition MP said it was like telling Koreans they were “hearing impaired”.

Mr Yoon is a former prosecutor who only entered politics last year and won the presidential elections earlier this year by less than 1%.

He is known as being prone to gaffes and has been struggling with low approval ratings soon after being elected, correspondents say.

He also drew criticism for failing to attend the Queen’s lying-in-state on his first day in London, for which his office blamed traffic issues.

Last year, he had to backtrack on his comment that the authoritarian president Chun Doo-hwan, who was responsible for massacring protesters in 1980, was “good at politics”.

Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy are expected to win the race, and rival Giuseppe Conte told supporters the vote was of historic significance.

The end of the campaign was dominated by rows over Europe and Russia’s war.

But voters are most concerned about spiralling energy costs.

Bills are surging for homeowners and businesses alike. Selling ice cream from her small gelateria in the beach town of Ostia, Audrey said her energy bills had more than trebled to €6,000 (£5,350) a month.

The outgoing national unity government under Mario Draghi has already pledged €66bn (£59bn) to help Italians.

But, on the seafront in Ostia, Erica complained her shopping bills were going through the roof.

The answer being offered by Giorgia Meloni is billions of euros of tax cuts and a flat tax for anyone earning less than €100,000.

At the last election she attracted a mere 4% of the vote but the last opinion polls produced more than two weeks ago gave her around 25%. She has benefited from being one of the few party leaders in opposition, while the others were taking part in the government.

Her party resents being linked to Italy’s wartime fascist past, but its roots lie in a movement that was born out of it. This week a Brothers of Italy (FdI) candidate was suspended for praising Hitler and Vladimir Putin.

But the main challenge to FdI’s right-wing alliance from the left has struggled to get off the ground because of infighting with possible allies.

Centre-left leader Enrico Letta took to the stage in Rome on Friday evening to the sound of an old wartime anti-Nazi Resistance anthem Bella Ciao.

Fellow left-wing figure Elly Schlein used the rally to challenge Giorgia Meloni’s hostility to what she terms the “LGBT lobby”. “I am a woman, I love another woman, but I am no less a woman for this,” said Ms Schlein.

The FdI leader has also attacked “gender ideology” and called for a naval blockade to stop migrants leaving Libya for Italy.

A native of Rome, unlike other leaders she chose to end her campaign away from the capital in the southern city of Naples. Southern Italy is distinctly poorer than the north, and she is facing stiff competition in the south from the Five Star Movement, which won the last election but has since lost ground.

Five Star is now led by Giuseppe Conte who has several policies in common with the centre left. They both back a €9 minimum wage and making it easier for the children of immigrants to get citizenship.

At the time of the last opinion poll in early September, Five Star was reaching 14% and is thought to have impressed voters towards the end of the campaign. “They gave us up for dead,” he told supporters in Rome.

In a dig at Ms Meloni’s right-wing alliance, he said voters had a choice of raising the salaries of people earning €4 an hour or raising those who took home €10,000 a month.

The other two parties expected to form a government with her are Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi of the centre right, who has sought to attract younger voters by producing TikTok videos.

The most viral video of the 85-year-old former prime minister this week was of him swatting a fly with his hand during a live TV interview.

Both men have had close links to Russia’s Vladimir Putin in recent years, and Mr Berlusconi got into hot water on Friday when he claimed the man who invaded Ukraine had been pushed by his population and ministers. Mr Putin had aimed to replace the Kyiv leadership with “decent people” and then leave, Mr Berlusconi suggested.

Matteo Salvini spent the last hours of his election campaign accusing the European Commission of interfering in the race.

He reacted angrily after European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Europe had “the tools” to respond if Italy took a nationalist stance in the same way as Hungary and Poland.

She added that the Commission was ready to work with any democratic government prepared to work with Brussels, but Mr Salvini said it was “shameful arrogance”.