The travails of two women PMs

Well, that’s not entirely correct. One is no longer a prime minister and the other at this precise moment (11.15am on Friday) is not yet a prime minister.

This week at least internationally and only in a certain sense has been dominated by the varying fortunes of Liz Truss and Giorgia Meloni. The fates of the two respective countries, so near to the people of these islands, depends on what happens with regards to these two women premiers.

Liz Truss is gone after one of the shortest premierships in the history of England, though enough to bury the old queen and welcome the new king.

She is gone after the economy was being driven into the wall by her reckless driving. We can now see that Truss was barely supported by the Tory MPs but overwhelmingly by the Tory members in a campaign that lasted the whole summer.

She kept anyone who supported Rishi Sunak, her opponent, out of the Cabinet and appointed people on the strength of their loyalty to her.

The result was predictable – the economy and the Pound went into freefall and what corrections needed to be made were then forced on her by the economic international bodies she had neglected to consult. This was the government that intended to enforce Brexit, ie no one tells the Brits what they must do, not the EU, not the IMF.

Immense damage was done to the British economy especially when Truss removed taxes from the rich without covering this by some additional revenue and foolishly refused to impose a windfall tax on the oil companies who are benefiting from higher international prices. The result was that most people in the UK were left staring at the prospect of real poverty.

Truss reacted by first throwing her Chancellor under a bus when he had only been following her orders and then by hiding from the House of Commons (hiding under her desk, the Labour Opposition claimed) coming out only to declare she doesn’t do resignations.

Which she did in less than 24 hours. The new party leader and thus the new prime minister will be hurriedly chosen this week as the long suffering British people pray and hope that what went wrong in a campaign that lasted the whole summer can be made right in a campaign that lasts just a week.

Over to Italy where Giorgia Meloni has been trying to form a new government after the Centre Right won the September election.

But she has been facing incredible problems caused by the smallest party in her coalition, led by her predecessor Silvio Berlusconi.

First there was the problem that the 86-year old absolutely wanted a woman senator elected in the Forza Italia list, Licia Ronzulli, a former nurse and former MEP, who Berlusconi wanted to be made a minister but who Meloni, who had crossed swords with her, absolutely refused to have.

In reaction, Berlusconi took to scrawl offensive epithets about Meloni on his folder on the Senate bench, which were soon picked up by the alert media armed with telephoto lenses watching from the public gallery.

Then came an exchange of insults with Ignazio La Russa who was elected as president of the Senate (the second highest post in the country) without the support of the Forza Italia senators.

With the coalition facing disintegration even before it was sworn in, the two leaders met and signed a truce.

It didn’t last long. A news agency, La Presse, somehow obtained a recording of Berlusconi boasting of his friendship with Vladimir Putin who sent him a crate full of vodka on his birthday. He added that Putin was right to invade the Ukraine because the Ukrainians had provoked Russia.

Predictably this caused a huge problem in Europe and Meloni was forced to declare her government would toe the NATO line. The person tipped to be the next foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, hurried to declare his support of the coalition defending the Ukraine.

Meloni reacted by letting the country know that the senators elected by Forza Italia bar three were ready to leave Forza Italia and set up a party of their own which would leave the Meloni administration in office. And Forza Italia would be wiped out at the next election.

Is this all a reaction of an aged leader to the refusal of a woman senator (who is not even his lover) to become a minister? Berlusconi even went so far to remind Meloni that her partner works with Mediaset, his television company. Or is it just elderly male jealousy?

The Italians have a saying, “Tutto il mondo e’ paese” (It’s the same all over the world). We too in this minuscule country have our problems as we continued to see this week, but then so too the two countries from which we get our inspiration.