The Five Star Movement is chaotic, but as popular as ever

THE funeral in Milan on October 15th of Dario Fo, Italy’s irrepressibly subversive Nobel laureate for literature (see Obituary), may have seemed like a commemoration of the old, Marxist left. On the rain-sodden Piazza del Duomo, clenched fists were raised, a Che Guevara banner unfurled and the great jester dispatched to his grave with a rendering of “Bella Ciao”, the anthem of Italy’s partisans in the second world war.

Yet the best-known mourners were not Marxists at all. They included the founder of the Five Star Movement (M5S), Beppe Grillo (pictured, right); the mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi; and other leading figures in what has become Italy’s main opposition group. Late in life, Mr Fo transferred his enthusiasm from the radical left to the M5S. He even wrote a book with Mr Grillo and the party’s co-founder, the late Gianroberto Casaleggio, explaining its ideas. These include attacking corruption in Italy’s mainstream parties, transcending the conventional distinction between right and left, and replacing representative democracy with a system of direct, Athenian-style rule by the people.

Unabashedly populist and Utopian, the M5S can also be sternly pragmatic. For example, Ms Raggi has abandoned cash-strapped Rome’s bid for the 2024 Olympics. But M5S is often disconcertingly eccentric. Mr Casaleggio’s bequest to his followers was a video predicting that robots with artificial intelligence would soon exterminate the human race.

True to its beliefs, the M5S chooses its electoral candidates in online ballots. Save in municipal elections, it does not accept anyone who has served more than a term as a political representative of any sort. The intention is to guarantee that its lawmakers and office-holders are free of the compromising links that are rife in Italian politics. But one effect is to ensure they are equally untainted by experience and, sometimes, ability.

As Italy prepares for a referendum on December 4th that could open the door to an eventual M5S government, the issue of the party’s competence is becoming pressing. Polls show voters evenly split between supporters and opponents of a government-sponsored constitutional reform. The prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has vowed to resign if the reform is rejected. That would not automatically lead to the M5S taking power, but Mr Grillo’s movement is the obvious beneficiary of the instability that would follow.

Its record in office is not reassuring. Since her election in June, the M5S mayor of Turin, Chiara Appendino, has made a solid enough start. But her counterpart in Rome, Ms Raggi, has lurched from one crisis or controversy to another. It took her three months to form an administration, and the all-important job of overseeing the budget eventually went to her fourth choice, after her first three picks either refused or resigned.

It is probably too early to pass judgment on either woman. Ms Appendino inherited a city competently administered by the outgoing mayor; Ms Raggi took over one deep in debt, racked by scandal and notorious for cronyism.

More conclusive is the movement’s experience in the northern city of Parma. In 2012 Federico Pizzarotti was elected mayor there, giving the M5S its first big electoral success. Earlier this month, he resigned from the movement, ending a turbulent association with its leaders. Relations began to fray after he rowed back on a campaign pledge to close the city’s waste incinerator, saying it was too expensive to do so.

“Once inside the institutions, [M5S office-holders] realise how they work and then have the difficult job of telling the rest of the party that what they promised can’t be done,” says Maria Elisabetta Lanzone, a political scientist at the University of Genoa and author of a book on the party.

The movement’s recent setbacks have eroded its popularity. Yet on average, the polls still put it within four percentage points of the governing Democratic Party. For many voters, experience and competence are less important at the moment than honesty and idealism. As Mr Fo knew, Utopian dreams go down very well with audiences.