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VILLAGEApril/May
L
A Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty)
won the Oscar for best foreign film this
year. Once again, an Italian director,
Paolo Sorrentino in this case, like Fellini
before, has come up with a work of art that
has no real plot, but delights in its own dra-
matic staging.
Thanks to its great architectural and
artistic patrimony, Italy makes good film.
All a director has to do is train the cameras
on, say, a Renaissance building, and profun-
dity seems to add itself. Suspicions of artistic
superficiality are brushed aside by sweeping
shots of great beauty. Presented with images
of ancient buildings, we hardly dare accuse
the film-maker of having no depth. The heft
and weight of monuments stand in for the
missing dimensions. If we cannot grasp the
meaning, we fear it may be our own igno-
rance of art history.
The same theatrical trick is perpetrated
beautifully shot,
but not great politics
INTERNATIONAL
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Land pillage in Honduras 74
Majoritarianism in Ukraine 76
More neoliberalism
with the new Italian
government.
By Conor Deane
The
camera
rolls on
Matteo
Renzi
April/May VILLAGE
in the world of politics. The notion that
Italy and its politics are exceptionally hard
to understand and impenetrable to the
unrefined mind is perpetuated by Italians
themselves. Its economic structures, judici-
ary, criminal organizations and government
institutions, too, are spoken of as if they
were as inscrutably mysterious, the pre-
sumption being that they, too, are steeped
in a tradition so ancient that only true adepts
can interpret them.
Yet this reverence for Italian depth com-
pletely evaporates on the world stage, where
no-one takes the country seriously. It is as
if, removed from their shabby-elegant his-
torical background, Italian politicians
are suddenly revealed to be minor inter-
changeable characters, or masques, not
to be treated with too much respect when
they try to influence European policy or
world affairs. Capable of flair, showiness,
design, modern Italy is regarded as essen-
tially clownish, a fact that possibly Fellini
and certainly Pirandello were aware of.
Italy remains a divided nation with
multiple centres of power. The apparent
complexity of its politics has more to do with
the confusion caused by an oversized cast of
minor characters rather than any intrinsic
complications of plot – like remembering
who’s who in ‘Game of Thrones’.
Far from being shifting and unstable,
Italian politics has for decades been mon-
olithic and unchanging. True, the political
par ties form many coa litions, ministers have
their exits and their entrances,
and one man in his time plays
many parts, but there are no
changes of scenery, no progress
in the acts. Italy has had many
governments, but it does not go
to the polls with any particular
frequency. Since , when it
became a republic, Italy has had
general elections. Ireland has
had in the same period.
Now a new character, Matteo
Renzi, takes the limelight. His
most compelling feature in this
most gerontocratic of nations
is his youth (he’s ). As for his
boyish and slightly goofy way of
acting, it is surely advantageous
in a country where the clown-
ish Berlusconi and the comedian
Beppe Grillo lead the other two major politi-
cal parties.
Renzi belongs to the “Partito Democratico”
(PD), a shadow of the once-proud Communist
Party of Italy that, even in name, seeks to
emulate the Democratic Party of the USA in
the belief that this is a lofty aspiration. In
, the PD returned to Parliament with a
majority of seats, though its electoral per-
formance put it on a par with Berlusconi’s
centre-right coalition (PdL) and just ahead
of Beppe Grillo’s radical and anti-political
Cinque Stelle (-Star) movement, which
believes in direct democracy and has refused
to align itself with any other party.
Renzi’s manoeuvring from mayor of
Florence to prime minister resembled a
piece of Jacobean theatre: fun enough to
watch, though hardly a source of comfort
for anyone hoping for statesmanship and
strategy instead of showboating and tac-
tics. To become premier, Renzi ousted a
fellow party member called Enrico Letta,
also quite young, but so priestly and sancti-
monious as to seem older than his years.
Letta, who applied precisely the same neo-
liberal policies as his predecessor, Mario
Monti (a former European Commissioner
appointed by Berlusconi), tried to pretend
that he was the new face of Italian politics,
but, as nephew of Berlusconi’s personal
adviser Gianni Letta, Enrico was a literal
embodiment of nepotism and symbol of the
continuity of policy and power.
Renzi certainly moves fast. In April
, he announced he wanted to become
secretary (leader) of the PD, and spent the
summer campaigning at summer festivals
of the party faithful. In November
he began criticising Letta’s government. In
the same month, Berlusconi was debarred
from public office when, finally, one of the
judicial sentences against him
took real effect, causing half his
party, Forza Italia to leave the
coalition. The other half renamed
itself the “New Centre-Right” and
stayed on in Letta’s now weakened
administration.
In December , Renzi won
the ‘primaries’ (another recent
import from the American sys-
tem) and became leader of the
PD, whereupon he immediately
started piling the pressure on
Letta’s unloved government and
setting out his own agenda for
reform. He warned that if the
country went to vote, he would
win, but piously observed that
elections would be bad at this time
of economic crisis. It is worth not-
ing that Renzi is not an elected MP, which
allows him to retain his outsider status and,
when it suits him, present himself as a mere
spectator of the political show.
On February , the Confederation of
Industries (Confindustria) came out against
Letta. Days later, on February, the PD
leadership decided a “new phase” of gov-
ernment was required. Letta resigned and
Renzi was appointed in his place
on February, promising great
change, beginning with the elec-
toral law.
The current electoral law was
tailor-made by Berlusconi to fit
his own needs, but is no longer
of much use to him (since he can-
not stand for election), or to his
diminished party. It now needs
to be rewritten to avoid another
hung parliament and, the parties
also hope, stymie the growth of
Grillo’s -Star movement. The
first interlocutor with whom
Renzi began discussion of elec-
toral reform was Berlusconi,
which, frankly, ought to put paid
to any hope we might have in this
new actor.
Still, Renzi has also promised
sweeping tax reforms, a “jobs
act” to create employment and,
in what is perhaps his most rad-
ical pledge, the abolition of the
Senate and some provincial governments,
both popular proposals as they would reduce
the surfeit of political players that the coun-
try is forced to pay and watch.
To believe that Renzi has been put in office
for the sake of continuity and stability, or
that he is no more than the establishment of
Italy rejuvenating itself may import despair,
but what else can we conclude when we look
at his counsellors? He was installed by a
President and Parliament that want to avoid
elections at all costs, immediately given
the blessing of Merkel and Brussels, and
his ascent to office came within days of the
industrialists pulling the plug on Letta. He
is winning the support of the same tax-shy
constituency that was once so supportive
of Berlusconi and the xenophobic Northern
League of Umberto Bossi. His “jobs act” is a
series of neo-liberal measures that decrease
worker security, and his promised fiscal
reforms might lop a point or two off income
tax but envisage no pursuit of evasion.
As in substance, so in style. Renzi favours
a media-savvy jocular man-of-the peo-
ple approach that is highly reminiscent of
Berlusconi. To set out his programme, he
used a PowerPoint presentation, which he
may have felt was fresh, but had echoes of
Berlusconi two decades ago sitting down in
front of the TV cameras to sign a “pact with
Italians”.
I may be mistaken, but I think we have
seen this film already and, I seem to remem-
ber, it ends inconclusively. •
The first
interlocutor
with whom
Renzi began
discussion
of electoral
reform was
Berlusconi
which ought
to put paid to
any hope in
this new actor
but he has
also promised
reforms
“
This reverence
for Italian
depth
completely
evaporates
on the world
stage, where
no-one takes
the country
seriously
“
