Italy goes to the polls this Sunday 27 September. This is a snap election forced on Italy’s president because the ‘technocratic’ government under former ECB chief Mario Draghi fell after he lost majority support in parliament. That support was lost, partly because Draghi vigorously backed NATO support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion – something that both the leading right-wing parties and the leftist Five Star were less keen on – and partly because the Draghi government was determined to keep to the fiscal strictures of the EU Commission in return for the huge EU regeneration package that Italy would receive to revive the economy after the COVID slump.

If the polls are correct, Italy will emerge from its general election on Sunday with a new far-right government led by arch-conservative Giorgia Meloni, president of the Brothers of Italy, a party that has rocketed to prominence from nowhere since the…