Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gestures on a television show in Rome in this February 20, 2024 file photo. REUTERS/Remo Casilli/Files
Silvio Berlusconi came roaring back to political life in Italy’s February parliamentary elections. The three-time former prime minister stunned the political and financial elites of Europe by tapping into widespread anti-austerity sentiment — just like the comedian-turned-movement-leader Beppe Grillo — apparently overcoming his myriad sex and corruption scandals.
But now that the trial is underway for what is perhaps Berlusconi’s most outrageous transgression — he is accused of paying a minor for sex — and voters are seeing his personal failings thrust back into the spotlight, it stands to reason that it is Grillo who will benefit the most if and when a snap election is called to settle the nation’s parliamentary gridlock. This assumes, of course, that one of Grillo’s lieutenants praising certain aspects of fascism and the comedian’s own history of anti-Semitic remarks will not come back to bite him. The smart money is that they will not. Italian voters have something of a reputation for their charitable view of this kind of nasty discourse; Berlusconi, after all, praised Mussolini late in the campaign and his own poll numbers kept on rising.
A center-right collapse and Grillo surge would be bad news for financial markets, though, much as they languished during Berlusconi’s tenure. Grillo is surely the most terrifying figure for European Union advocates and austerity proponents, and that his Five Star Movement might build on its 25 percent and approach a plurality is looking more and more likely. At least Berlusconi can communicate with business elites and rub elbows at Davos. It is far more difficult to imagine Grillo (who is barred by his own party rules from entering parliament himself because of a vehicular manslaughter conviction) or his followers calmly taking part in a global economic conference attended by Europe’s one percent.
Berlusconi’s latest humiliation — and that the center-right is standing by him — speaks, as Jonathan Hopkin writes at Foreign Affairs, to the sorry state of Italy’s established political parties. After all, the center-left coalition led by Pier Luigi Bersani may not have been burned by sex scandals, but it blew a massive pre-election lead in polling and failed to take advantage of favorable headwinds, resulting in an internal firestorm that hasn’t fully played out yet. Both are in disarray, despised by the public, and with economist and outgoing technocrat P.M. Mario Monti having flamed out as a politician, it is Grillo whose unorthodox movement is reflecting the broader zeitgeist of a European politics in flux, one that is borne from outrage at corruption and widespread adherence to Berlin’s economic orthodoxy. And with Berlusconi partially hobbled by the trial, Grillo should find himself with more of a lock on the anti-austerity, E.U. resentment vote than last time. If this isn’t how Monti, the citizen of the world and ally of Germany, saw things playing out when he made the leap into the political fray last year, he should strap in for the ride. It’s going to be bumpy.
