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Five-Star movement's Luigi Di Maio (centre) smiles during the vote to elect the new Low Chamber president, in Rome yesterday
ITALIAN Five Star Movement chief Luigi Di Maio praised far-right League leader Matteo Salvini today after they cobbled together a deal to split important parliamentary posts.
Mr Di Maio told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that Mr Salvini “has proved he keeps his word” and said he wouldn’t rule out coalition talks with parliament’s right-wing bloc, of which the League is the largest party.
The rightwingers also include convicted fraudster Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. It is the second-largest of the group and provided the candidate for president of the Senate, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, the first woman to hold that position.
While Italy’s communist tradition remains fragmented and politically marginal, France’s party is attempting to re-establish itself as an independent force rooted in working-class organisation, says NICK WRIGHT
NICK WRIGHT continues his series analysing the trends in European politics
Italians reject controversial judiciary reforms in a referendum that boosts the left, reports NICK WRIGHT
From Reform UK to Trump, Orban and beyond, the far right is organised across borders and growing. Waiting for it to collapse is a fatal error – building an international, locally rooted left alternative is now an urgent necessity., argues ROGER McKENZIE