Problems forming a government in Italy

THE inconclusive result of Italy’s election on March 4th has, paradoxically, foisted a decisive role on a party that emerged from the contest demoralised, defeated and divided. Though its share of the vote plunged to below 19%, its worst-ever result, the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) will occupy enough seats in the new parliament to be able to put either a right-wing alliance or the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) into government. Guessing which way they will jump, though, is no easy matter.

It is a measure of the disaster that befell the party that the centre-left alliance it led came first in only one of the four regions that formerly comprised central Italy’s “red belt”. The right was victorious in Umbria and Emilia-Romagna. The M5S headed the poll in the Marche. The exception was Tuscany, the native region of the PD’s former leader, Matteo Renzi, whose resignation was accepted on March 12th at a meeting of his party’s leadership.

Florence, Tuscany’s regional capital, is a more working-class city than the tourists who come for its art and architecture might imagine. A thick belt of manufacturing industry stretches north-west from the city, which is ringed with suburbs like Coverciano, made up of low-rise apartment blocks dating from the days of Italy’s economic miracle in the 1950s and 60s. The only museum in Coverciano is devoted to football. At its social centre, named after a Communist partisan shot by the Nazis, retired factory hands rub shoulders with young men sporting hipster fashions. Few say they voted for the PD that Mr Renzi shaped after he was elected to lead it five years ago.

“At the beginning, everyone here was with him,” said Luigi Scarponi, the centre’s president. “But the PD ought to be on the side of the workers and in government Renzi did what [the right] hadn’t managed to do.” His list of the errors of Mr Renzi’s government in 2014-16 included an increase in the retirement age and a reform that abolished the right of unfairly dismissed workers to reinstatement. Both changes were explained by Italy’s need to reduce its mountainous debt and create new jobs for its young people, but both were strongly disliked by those in work. Mr Scarponi also blamed successive, PD-dominated governments for failing, until recently, to stem illegal immigration—a view party officials say is widespread in ostensibly leftist Tuscany.

The PD is the child of a marriage between mostly working-class ex-communists and mostly middle-class, progressive ex-Christian Democrats. Though a minority, it is the latter who have led each of Italy’s last three governments. Their business-friendly reforms, Mr Renzi’s autocratic ways and the objections to both from more traditional left-wingers have stretched the party’s unity to breaking point. Members of its old guard formed a rival movement, Free and Equal (LeU), last year.

Now the choice the PD faces risks dividing what is left of the party yet again. Mr Renzi, who is estimated still to command the loyalty of almost half his party’s lawmakers, will remain influential. His view is that the PD should refuse negotiations with either the Five Star Movement or the right, and go into opposition. Maurizio Martina, who has taken his place until a new party leader is chosen next month, agrees; the responsibility for forming a government lies with Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the M5S, and Matteo Salvini, who heads the Northern League, which emerged from the election as the dominant force on the right, outgunning Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia with which it is in alliance.

Opposition also appears to be the favoured option of PD activists. The M5S has long reserved its most scornful barbs for the centre-left, creating a residue of loathing for the new party among the grass roots. Suggestions of a deal with M5s have met with furious protests from PD activists on Twitter.

Yet the voters may think differently. An exit poll for Il Fatto Quotidiano, a newspaper, found that 59% of those who voted for the centre-left this month favoured a coalition with the M5S and the LeU, That is logical since Five Star voters are closer in outlook to the PD’s followers than to Italy’s conservatives. The M5S claims left and right are outdated concepts. It advocates a mix of policies from across the political spectrum. But a political self-positioning survey by Demos & PI, a research institute, found the answers of Five Star voters put them, on balance, slightly to the left of centre. It is their very proximity to the PD’s electorate, however, that causes many in the centre-left to see in the M5S a dangerous rival and fear that, if the PD were to collaborate with Five Star, it could be submitting to a deadly embrace.

The alternatives for Italy include an agreement between the PD and the right (rejected by Mr Salvini), an all-party government (rejected by Mr Di Maio) and a partnership between the M5S and the populist, hard-right League. It is the last that most scares Italy’s EU partners, as it would bring to power, in a country with public debt of more than 130% of GDP, two parties pledged to cut taxes and increase spending. At the European Parliament on March 13th, Mr Salvini ruled out a unilateral exit from the euro zone in the short term, but said he was prepared to ignore its budget deficit limit of 3% of GDP. The M5S holds the same position. So far, Mr Salvini has appeared to rule out a deal with Five Star, but that could change. So the choices the PD faces are not just hard ones. They could have fateful effects far beyond Italy.