The last time France recalled its ambassador to Rome was in June 1940. Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, observing the collapse of the French army before Hitler’s tanks, opportunistically declared war and made a grab for southeastern France. It was not a success. Italy’s ramshackle, poorly equipped conscripts were halted within a few miles of the border, dying in their hundreds in the summer Alpine snow.
We Britons are sometimes accused by our European neighbors of banging on about the Second World War, but this time, it is the French government drawing the parallel. “France has been, for several months, the object of repeated accusations, unfounded attacks, and outrageous declarations,” said its Foreign Ministry in an official statement justifying the diplomatic rupture. “This is unprecedented since the end of the war.”
French President Emmanuel Macron had been provoked by the appearance of Italy’s vice premier, Luigi Di Maio, alongside the leaders of the gilets jaunes, the fluorescent-yellow mobs who have been protesting against Macron every weekend since November. The president’s reference to the war was intended to signal to the world that he was defending the international order against euroskeptic Italian adventurers who, Mussolini-like, were threatening global stability.
The Italian government, a coalition of Left and Right populist parties, is sticking to its guns. In its view, it is championing popular democracy against an out-of-touch elite run by bankers and Davos corporatists — an elite personified by Macron, a former Rothschild financier. Which, when you think about it, is close enough to what the French government is saying, but from the opposite perspective.
What makes the row so bitter is that it is not simply a clash between the two neighbors. There have been plenty of those over the years, going right back to Italy’s unification in the 1860s. The French saw that as their own achievement, an attitude many Italians naturally resented. What we have now, rather, is an ideological conflict that is being played out within most European countries: The masses against the classes, sovereignty against supranationalism, the paese legale (the lawyers, pundits, politicians, and business chiefs) against the paese reale (everyone else).
Think of it this way. In France, Macron leads a centrist government whose guiding principle is European integration. He is opposed by both the Left and the Right, who can be found shoulder to shoulder among the ranks of the gilets jaunes. Indeed, last week, Marine Le Pen supporters and communists, both clad in their bright, marker-pen vests, briefly broke off from protesting against him to brawl with each other.
In Italy, it is the other way around. The people who are on the barricades in France are in office there, while europhile centrists make up the resentful opposition. Each government took power by defeating a domestic version of the other. The Lega, Italy’s dominant party, is allied to Le Pen, whom Macron beat in the second round of the French presidential election, despite his paltry showing in the first round. Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the Lega party, sees Macron as the French equivalent of the entitled political class he has just ousted in Rome, referring to the Frenchman as “il signorino” — the young master.
Who is right? It depends on your point of view. There is no question that governments of the Macron stripe played their part in provoking a populist backlash. They appeared more interested in promoting the euro as an instrument of integration than in the welfare of the people who used it, and they looked on with seeming indifference as unemployment spiraled in the eurozone. They were cavalier about immigration, too quick to dismiss reasonable concerns as racist. They see what most of us would call legitimate patriotism as dark and atavistic.
The rise of radical and nativist parties was partly a reaction to these attitudes. But it is far from clear that the insurgent parties offer answers. They want to place a different set of people in charge — people they regard as “authentic” rather than “out of touch” — but they often then set about rewarding their own supporters through targeted subsidies, tax credits, or semimonopolies. The underlying problems remain. Result? France’s economy is barely growing at all, while Italy’s is shrinking.
The only major country in the region with no populist party in its main legislative chamber is the United Kingdom. Why? Partly because Brexit is already working: When people feel that they are masters in their own house, angry nativists lose their appeal.
Remember all the things that were supposed to happen if Britain voted “Leave”? The populism, the street violence, the economic stagnation? They’re happening all right, but they’re happening on the other side of the Channel.
