SILVIO BERLUSCONI is in a fix. And how he tries to get out will have repercussions for Matteo Renzi’s reforming government. The media tycoon’s predicament became clear on November 24th as results came in from a regional election in Emilia-Romagna, once the heartland of Italian communism. The voters duly elected as their governor the candidate of Mr Renzi’s centre-left Democratic party (PD).The shock came in the voting for the region’s legislature: Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, the biggest on the right, polled a humiliating 8%. That was less than half the tally of the Northern League, a party that was written off two years ago after a financing scandal involving its founder, Umberto Bossi. In December 2013 the leadership of the League passed to Matteo Salvini. The 41-year-old Mr Salvini has all but ditched Mr Bossi’s (never very convincing) Northern separatism to focus the League almost exclusively on causes dear to the European far right, represented by Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.“I call it La Ligue Nationale,” says Ilvo Diamanti, professor of political science at the University of...
from The Economist: Europe http://ift.tt/1AVTONF
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