Vocal Voices

Whetever will be will be, this gov'ment's not right you see, Che sera, sera.

So it is back to square one for the Italians. There is no government and today's rejection by President Mattarella of the proposed economics minister left prospective Prime Minister Conte to call the whole thing off (another song).

New elections? Probably.

The Italian President is voted for by the Italian parliament. Which at the time was pro EU.
The new parliament and government is not nearly so pro EU.
So the pro EU president is blocking the anti EU government.
Int democracy grand?

It leaves Italy in limbo and allows the EU to direct any changes it wants. For Now.

Knowing the Italians, now they have decided to vote for change, they will keep on voting for change and more radical change as each election round goes on. They are not usually that organised, but they will organise when they think they are being blocked.

The President may think he is helping all things EU by blocking an anti EU government, but all he is going to do is hasten in the day when a single anti EU party gets a majority of votes. The day that happens the power of the President will be quite constrained.

He also wants to think very carefully about this. Normally the President outlives the government he is interfereing in because his term is 7 years and so another election is gone before he is being voted on. The chaotic state of elections in Italy means that this current government (when it is finally formed), will still have 1-2 years to run when he is up for re-election.

He may think he is doing something for the EU today, but all he is likely to do is bring in a rabidly anti EU President at the next Presidential election; who would then form an anti EU government 1-2 years later.

Not such deep strategists, current politicians, are they?? La Lega and M5S can win by refusing to form a government and forcing a minority government on Italy until the President comes up for re-election. They can then force their choice of a candidagte into the Presidency and fight the next election 1-2 years later on the back of it.

Looking at it from the outside it may look like chaos. But from the inside what is going on right now could make total sense and, also, be one of the most dangerous moves the EU has seen and I include Brexit in that.

This is all rather amusing. To me it looks like a general throwing his very best troops at the opening skirmishes because he would lose the battle at the outset. Hoping for re-inforcements to come before the main battle opens. A forlorn hope. Only to lose the main battle so comprehensively that things will change radically as a result of it. This is what happened in America in the war of independence. There was no doubt Britain could have won, they just didn't want to pay the cost of the win. So they lost.

So the Italian elite have thrown their president into the meat grinder, to gain 3-4 more years. It seems rather short sighted to me.

Another one to watch, this year, is the Swedish elections. They are every 4 years and the Sweden Democrats (almost neo Nazi), have been gaining continuously. In the last 18 months they have polled 1st, 2nd or 3rd in the polls. Currently they are running an aggregate 2nd largest party and it would only take one very bad move by the EU to push them into contending for the largest party. For a party that, 12 years ago, was reviled, had less than 2.5% of the vote and no seats in parliament, that tells you a LOT about how unhappy the run of the mill Swede is about the way things are going. The EU and Immigration bein the top two issues for Swede's who vote SD.

OK the two other large parties, centre left and centre right, will have more votes than SD, so can form a coalition, however that is an even more dangerous move. Because it would finally force Swede's to vote for SD with enough numbers to give them an overall majority (something which never happens in Sweden because of PR), which would be a very dangerous place to put that kind of party in.

I had to laugh today. Sky news led with the Italian crisis. It showed interviews with four Italian politicians and punditry about what comes next.
The BBC? Ten seconds, fifteen minutes into the news bulletin. Bare bones stuff.
They don't really do bad news stories when they relate to the EU.

Well their International website had some more news to report though.

It has caused highly interesting fallout. Especially putting an ex IMF technocrat in place to host a caretaker government. Someone who is incredibly unpopular...

It does raise an interesting question; who actually rules, what matters? The results of an election or what "investors" ie banks want?