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Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.
Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).
What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?
P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?
Is this a massive cultural / political event? Brexit was supposed to be massive, but I don't see that much of a course change in the UK. What exactly are you expecting to see in Italy?
It might eventually mean the dissolution of the United Kingdom given that it has given the Scottish nationalists a lot of energy and they're pretty eager to hold another referendum.
Similar (but to a lesser extent) in Northern Ireland where most voted Remain. I'd say it's early for anything to happen yet, but given the recent demographic tipping point some economically minded pro-EU Protestants would be an important cohort for nationalists to court.
It gave them a rationale, but didn't make an obvious impact on Scottish opinion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_Scots_Indep_V6_new_format.pdf
The Scottish nationalists did better in the general election before the Brexit vote than after.
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Three-step plan to effecting an irreversible change:
Polarize the issue along partisan lines.
Spam referenda again and again on the issue until, by chance, the political weather favors your side at a time a referendum is held enough to put you over the 50% threshold.
Once you get your victory, it's permanent. Rejoice!
I have doubts that 50% thresholds are a good idea when the choice is between "the status quo since time immemorial" and "breaking it permanently," owing to the polarization effects. (The past three years have pretty well demonstrated that anything can be subjected to a partisan split, so it seems.) I think that standard for Brexit itself was unwise (but it was still the standard chosen.) But when it's paired with "vote until they vote right" it seems hardly honest.
Same thing happened with the Lisbon Treaty referenda in Ireland. The first try it was rejected in 2008, they held it again the next year and it passed.
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See also: The US Constitutional amendment process, intentionally made nontrivial but flexible.
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Brexit was not that much of a change only if your expectations of change were formed by feverish media coverage of implied mass deportations and economic collapse. But that is not the topic here.
My primary expectation with regard to political consequences of this even isn't some sort of battle over gays or abortion but about the future of the Euro. I firmly believe that the Euro has been disastrous for plenty of countries but primarily Italy. The Italian political elite (mainly the PD adjacent people) had been taking decisions to the active detriment of their own country to sustain the Euro project. Roughly since Berlusconi was ousted. We are approaching a serious economic crisis and the end of the QE project which has kept the Euro on life support in the last 10 years. Certain decisions taken or not taken by the Italian government in the next year when the push comes to shove might very well cause the collapse of the EU project in unpredictable ways.
My expectation was some kind of departure from the default Western Orthodoxy. I don't see much talk about reindustrialization, cutting immigration, or cutting bureaucracy. They didn't even use their independence from the EU to pursue a different COVID policy.
I see where you're coming from, and I agree it's going to be interesting. There are a lot of forces pulling in completely different directions, and like you say to whole thing might finally tip over. I'm just hesitant to assume this particular election changes anything, after seeing how almost every populist turn has been pacified in recent memory.
While the covid policies in the UK weren't very different from Europe, they still did some things on their own. The UK did lockdowns unfortunately and barred people going to national parks and fined them for breaking lockdowns. Also required a lot of testing and quarantine for travellers. But at least with vaccination I think the UK did much better. IT provided better information about vaccines, spaced out doses when vaccine was in short supply, abolished vaccine mandates even for healthcare professionals. It even did some human challenge studies, albeit very late. I am in healthcare and the health authorities tried to evaluate available evidence better than other countries. For example, the UK quickly understood that Paxlovid effect is limited to unvaccinated risk groups and stopped using it unnecessarily while the US gave it green light and it was just wasted money. The Europe simply skipped on Paxlovid probably due to its cost, though :)
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I think you are mostly right except this bit. For much of last year the UK had radically different covid policies than the EU (often absolutely no policy at all). I believe it was partly the embarrassment and disturbing questions caused by the fact that England was doing just fine with no rules compared to places with vax and mask obsession, that brought about the end of European corona regime. I can only talk for Dutch language media but mainstream people were definitely questioning heavily why we had to scan vax QR codes everywhere and keep a lockdown while while the Brits were business as usual, with similar corona outcomes.
I expect a big change in some way we totally did not predict. After seeing how the neoliberal masters of the world almost crashed the continent in 2008 and got rewarded by gaining almost complete bankers hegemony, who the hell can even claim to foresee anything.
I think what you're describing is mostly after the craze has passed? I'm pretty sure I remember plenty of Brits complaining about lockdowns, at least at the beginning. The interesting part is that originally they did have an idea to pursue the complete opposite "let it rip" policy, but that was shut down very fast, by some Scientific institution releasing extremely exaggerated numbers of expected deaths, based on a simulation running on buggy code.
It's that kind of stuff that makes me very apathetic about election results.
People from different places have a very different idea of when the craze has passed. For example the Netherlands has entered a total lockdown (as in, basically everything closed) on 19th December 2021 over models showing omicron will kill us all. Meanwhile Peru has lifted its inside-outside-at-all-times mask mandate literally last week after 3 years.
Almost every single country did, as this was the basic pandemic planning everywhere until Wuhan lockdown was declared an unprecedented success. The following events have caused unfathomable economic/social damage and suffering. And it is somehow entirely forgotten from mainstream consciousness. I still can't get my head around this.
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We get plenty of coverage on American insider baseball and X-wrote-Y-about-Z-saying-K-about-J-which-may-not-even-be-real in agonizing detail when it pertains to the least significant facet of the CW in America. Significance is hardly the only criterion here.
Oh, please don't get me wrong, I am absolutely in favor of discussing news from other corners of the world. I was just objecting to the criticism, that we spend too much time on vanilla Culture War.
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