If you want to know what's going to happen to the European
Union, all you have to do is look at what's happening to Italy.
What do we see? A populist coalition that is broken-backed
even before it takes office. Voter anger at a stagnating economy and a failed
political elite. Growing social stresses as a result of a sudden influx of
migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
Perhaps you think Italy doesn't matter that much. It's
always been a bit of a basket case, hasn't it? Always teetering on the brink of
chaos and collapse, but somehow always managing to survive.
Believe me, Italy matters. It is, after all, the country
that gave us Europe's own Donald Trump a full twenty years before the American
version sent shudders around the world. His name was Silvio Berlusconi, and his
slogan was Forza Italia, originally a
football chant which translates roughly as Let's Go, Italy. Or, in American, Let's
Make America Great Again.
He was a controversial business tycoon who had originally made
his money as a property developer; he was alleged to have some decidedly dodgy
connections to the world of organised crime; and he was an unapologetic
womaniser with a penchant for making deeply offensive remarks about women. (He
once told an opposition politician that she was 'more beautiful than
intelligent' -- and a hundred thousand people signed a protest petition in
response.)
Italians used to be among the EU's most passionate
enthusiasts. As an Italian journalist once explained to me: 'When you look at
the record of our national governments, you'll understand why we have no
problem with giving more power to Brussels.'
Not any more. The financial crash of 2007-8 hit Italy
particularly hard and it has still not recovered: it is the only one of the
EU's major economies in which GDP growth per capita is still lower than it was
at the time of the crash. Debt as a percentage of GDP is the second highest in
the EU after Greece, and in some parts of southern Italy, the unemployment rate
is close to thirty per cent.
As if all that wasn't enough, Italy's EU partners have
utterly failed to help offer sanctuary to the hundreds of thousands of men,
women and children who have risked their lives to escape from war, famine and
grinding poverty. An estimated 700,000 people have arrived in Italy by sea from
Libya over the past five years, yet all attempts to persuade other EU countries
to offer some of them homes have come to nothing.
No wonder Italian voters are now a lot less enthusiastic
about Brussels. In last March's elections, the two parties that did best were
both populist: the centre-right alliance dominated by the League, a formerly
separatist party based in the north, and the anti-establishment Five Star
Movement, founded by the former comedian Beppe Grillo.
So now they will try to govern together. Their respective
leaders, Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, cordially detest each other and have
little in common other than their ability to tap into Italian voters' deep
disaffection with traditional politics. It is as if, said one commentator,
Nigel Farage and Billy Connolly were to try to form a coalition in Westminster.
If they make a go of it, they will try to introduce economic
policies that will induce apoplexy or worse in Brussels and Frankfurt. If they
succeed -- and the ifs do start piling up at this point -- the EU could soon face a crisis that would
make the post-crash Greek debt crisis look like a minor hiccup.
This isn't the first time that Italy's partners have had
cause for alarm. Silvio Berlusconi was regarded in his heyday much as Trump is regarded
now: unreliable, corrupt, and worryingly close to Moscow. Going back even
further, to when I was a correspondent in Rome in the 1970s, Italy often seemed
on the brink of acquiring a government coalition in which the Communist party
would be included. At the height of the Cold War, that gave Italy's NATO allies
-- and especially Washington -- nightmares.
The election last year of Emmanuel Macron in France and the
re-election (just) of Angela Merkel in Germany may have given the impression
that Europe's anti-Brussels populist wave had been halted. It hasn't. Just take a look at Hungary or Poland -- and
if you want to look beyond Europe, how about Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir
Putin in Russia, or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey?
Look at it this way: the UK, which is the EU's second
biggest economy in GDP terms, is negotiating its exit; Italy, its fourth
biggest economy, is about to be governed by a ramshackle coalition that opposes
just about all EU economic orthodoxies -- and Germany, the EU's biggest
economy, is ruled by a much-weakened chancellor with the far-right,
anti-Brussels Alternative für Deutschland
party now the third largest in parliament.
Back in September 2015, as the EU's problems began to mount,
I suggested a new mathematical formula: Greek debt crisis + EU migration crisis
+ Brexit = end of EU.
And now there's Italy to add to the equation. Would you bet
on the EU still being with us in ten years' time? I'm not sure I would.
By the way, if you missed the first programme in my four-part documentary series The Future of English, you can still hear or download it by clicking here. The second programme will be broadcast on the BBC World Service next Wednesday.