AFTER 88 days of Italy’s most serious political impasse since the second world war; after nearly three months of false starts, painstaking negotiations, giddying about-turns and vetoes—culminating in a heart-stopping market panic—many Italians would have been content to be governed by the horse that, legend has it, the Emperor Caligula wanted to make a consul.
Instead, on June 1st, they got as their prime minister a little-known law professor, Giuseppe Conte. His cabinet is formed largely of relative political novices from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and hard-right populists belonging to the Northern League. With this all-populist coalition, Italy enters territory never before explored in a western European state.
Mr Conte’s first stab at heading a government was scotched by Sergio Mattarella, the president, on May 27th. The head of state controversially refused to swear in the populists’ proposed finance minister, an 81-year-old economist,...Continue reading
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