In fact, Rome had been a constant source of concern for the previous three years. The Italian legislature had started in the spring of 2018 with a political earthquake that had produced the first national-populist government in Western Europe. Insulting migrants, feminists and progressives, Matteo Salvini often traveled to Moscow and took selfies in Red Square wearing a T-shirt with the image of Vladimir Putin. The 5 Star Movement (M5E) sealed agreements with Beijing and Italy was the first country of the European Union to enter the Chinese New Silk Road.
A little over a year later, Salvini was carried south africa phone number list away by hubris after winning 34% of the votes in the 2019 European elections: from the Papeete Beach beach bar, on the Adriatic coast, asked for "full powers" and broke the government coalition with the grillini ["little crickets", of the 5 Star Movement, M5E] thinking of going to early elections in which he would sweep.
However, in one of the unforeseen twists in Italian politics, the M5E - the "anti-system" party founded in 2009 by comedian and actor Beppe Grillo - reached an agreement with the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and formed a new Executive, timidly progressive, chaired by Giuseppe Conte himself, an unknown lawyer for Volturara Appula, who Salvini and Luigi Di Maio -former M5E leader who divided the party in 2022- had appointed as President of the Council the previous year . Then came the pandemic that turned everything upside down. And above all, the management of the billions of European funds. Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi conspired behind the scenes, brought down the Executive and that's where Draghi entered the scene, presented as the savior of an irreformable country that, beyond the Alps, no one can understand.