Last week on the same day, we witnessed two major political moves in Britain and Italy; the former lost its third female prime minister, making her tenure Britain’s shortest ever; the latter had Giorgia Meloni sworn in as the prime minister, becoming the first woman to serve in the position.
I confess that when Liz Truss appeared on Britain's political horizon with her long list of U-turns, I thought she would possess the pliancy that the oligarchic political system in that country required. In your undergraduate political science class, they teach you that the Magna Carta, in 1215, installed the basic democratic values in the United Kingdom; however, later you learn from your daily political news in the Times newspaper that it is not the electorate’s consent that installs the prime minister but a cabal of backbenchers in both political parties. In the Conservative Party, it is usually the committee called “1922” (because it was set up in 1922 in its last incarnation but it survived in various forms and shapes throughout the ages); the Labour Party has its leader elected by a Special Leadership Conference in which one-third of the votes are allocated to the party’s members in the parliament who are known to be steered by the party whips!
In this day and age!
No wonder a Guardian reader, Mr. Simon Carbery from Tetbury, Gloucestershire, in his letter to the editor, was asking for democratic rules in electing the prime minister of his country: “Let’s start with this: a new political leader in government must be installed only with the electorate’s consent, after an election of the entire population. We’re 800 years overdue for some basic political guidelines to be enshrined in constitutional law.” Bravo Mr. Carbery; you must be Guardian’s editor.
In accordance with the current oligarchic system, Prime Minister Truss resigned 44 days after taking office, bowing to the party oligarchs, which were, in turn, bowing to the demands of global capitalistic imperialism called the “financial markets.” Just a day before her resignation, she had vowed to stay in power, saying she was “a fighter and not a quitter.” But “the party” first made Truss fire her Treasury chief, Kwasi Kwarteng, claiming that the economic package her minister drafted spooked financial markets and triggered an economic and political crisis. She didn’t have the stamina to tell Graham Brady, a senior Conservative lawmaker who oversees leadership challenges, to buzz off. Kwarteng’s plan would cut 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in unfunded tax cuts that would otherwise help the people protect themselves from the disastrous effects of the pandemic. With Kwarteng, she thought Britain should not follow the lead of the United States. But no! The chairperson of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham, walked into 10 Downing Street and told Truss to start packing because her economic program had sparked turmoil in the financial markets; it had hammered the value of the pound. As a result of this, the Bank of England (BoE) had to intervene to prevent the crisis from spreading to the wider economy and putting pension funds at risk.
The infamous artist of U-turns all her personal and political life – being liberal-democrat when young but turning into conservative later; supporting the idea of abolishing the monarchy, later defending it; defending European Union membership but becoming pro-Brexit – Truss could for once in her life stick with her economic programs like changes to corporation tax and the length of time the government will support people with their energy bills. Who knows, this time she could scare the party bosses rather than being scared by them. After all, it is not easy to become an “Iron Lady” as it seems from the outside; is it, Liz?
Truss’s political pliancy made her the shortest-ever serving prime minister of the United Kingdom. Her downfall was hastened by her willingness to change what other people want. The Big Boys did not like Liz, accusing her of turning Britain into Britaly, and kicked her to the curb! They even called her “a lettuce.”
On the same fateful October day, down in the “boot of Europe,” Meloni took the helm of her country becoming Italy's first female prime minister. When her nationalist Brothers of Italy Party was swept to victory in an election last month, Ursula von der Leyen, a German politician who has been serving as the president of the European Commission since 2019, dared to deliver a not-so-veiled warning to Meloni, saying that there would be consequences should Italy veer away from democratic principles. Taking their cue from the president of the EC, European media was quick to label Meloni the “successor of Mussolini.” Famous European newspapers published commentaries about Meloni’s “suspicious background” as a youngster participating in “fascistic groups’ youth camps.”
The point von der Leyen and those mouthpieces of the Brussel bureaucrats missed is that Meloni is not only the first-ever female prime minister of Italy, but she is the first popularly elected prime minister since 2008. All those years, Italian prime ministers have been appointed in the back rooms with negotiations with European Union bureaucrats. Those EU chiefs, Ursula von der Leyen among them, had appointed whomever they were pleased with as the prime minister of Italy. The last so-called national unity administration was led by former European Central Bank head Mario Draghi; before him, Italian lawyer Giuseppe Conte was plucked out of political obscurity by the “Eureacrats.” Paolo Gentiloni Silveri was an Italian politician serving as European Commissioner for Economy in the von der Leyen Commission when he was appointed as Italian PM. The list goes all the way back to Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon and politician who was truly elected the prime minister of the country.
It tells us that the reason Brussels and their puppets attacked Meloni has nothing to do with her politics, but merely the opportunity the EU was going to lose in ruling Italy through their proxies in Rome. This point was voiced by several leaders. Polish President Andrzej Duda accused von der Leyen of extreme arrogance over her speeches. Von der Leyen had to backpedal; and media pointed at the fact that Meloni was not a fascist, not even an ultranationalist; she was simply promoting policies that would curb undocumented and illegal immigration to Italy. Perhaps, her fiery speeches were somewhat too loud for non-Mediterranean folks.
Now, as Truss steps down, Meloni steps up. Italians love Meloni; Britons could have loved Liz, should party bosses allowed her to implement her policies. Meloni is determined to implement her nationalist program even if EU bosses dislike her.
But as the Doppelhandel Duo sing, “You can't force love. That's out of your control. It goes where it flows.”
