Why Italy’s Five Star Movement has Brexit supporters excited
COLUMNIST
DO YOU remember that in the wake of the Brexit referendum result senior eurosceptics started talking about turning Ukip into a mass movement – something bigger than a traditional political party?
Most people’s attention was focused not on the future of Ukip, but the future of Britain.
But we can now see just what they had in mind.
The Italian Five Star Movement (M5S) has just helped humiliate Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who announced his resignation after losing a referendum designed to strengthen central government.
There is now a push for an election and speculation that M5S – which has already won the mayoralty in Rome and Turin – could find itself at the helm of the third biggest economy in the eurozone.
If so, this could be a hat-trick for the forces of anti-establishment populism, coming on the heels of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump.
M5S is not a normal political party. It brings together environmentalists and eurosceptics and combines support for eco-friendly transport with a recognition of a right to internet access.
Just as Ukip frightens the British political establishment by taking votes from both Labour and the Conservatives, M5S can vacuum up support from the left and the right.
At its core is not a set of policy commitments but the central idea that the internet has opened up the potential for a new era of “direct democracy” and that old-style parties are no longer required in an online age.
Supporters are united by a deep loathing of the political establishment that has led Italy for generations.
The movement’s co-founder, comedian-turned-activist Giuseppe Peiro Grillo, used the website meetup.com and his blog to bring together people with a longing for change.
Just as Ukip’s emergence as a political force may have been helped by the expenses scandals that shrouded Westminster in infamy, fans of M5S came together in anticorruption rallies.
Positions have included pledges to cut parliamentarians’ salaries and stop people with criminal offences taking political office.
The freewheeling spirit of the movement, its harnessing of the internet, and its fondness for rallies has certain parallels with the lowcost campaign with which Trump won the White House. Trump exploited anger with the Washington establishment with his call to “drain the swamp” and Mr Grillo has admitted there are “some similarities”.
Ukip was instrumental in getting the EU referendum called but – thanks in part to the First Past the Post voting system – won just one MP in the Westminster election despite netting short of four million votes. New leader Paul Nuttall knows just how steep a challenge he faces in trying to unite a fractious party and secure its electoral future.
But rather than trying to become another party in the Westminster tradition, does M5S provide a model for how he could bring together people with often contradictory opinions but a shared desire to shake the status quo?
One of the most influential figures in euroscepticism, campaigner, businessman and donor Arron Banks, pointed to such a future in July, stating: “We won’t achieve anything by tempering ourselves to create another bland, centrist party. We need to lower the barriers to entry for politics and reach out to new audiences online, as Beppe Grillo’s revolutionary Five Star Movement has done in Italy.”
There is great speculation about Mr Banks’ plans for a new movement, and in Conservative quarters clear excitement about the potential of a rival movement to Ukip to inflict “serious damage” on their competitor.
In August, Nigel Farage commented that “over the next two or three years” Ukip “could be the nucleus, if you like, of a new, perhaps bigger political movement”.
Mr Farage welcomed the Italian referendum result, describing it as a “hammer blow to the euro and the pro-EU establishment who have given the Italian people more poverty, unemployment and less security because of mass immigration”.
He gave his backing to “quick elections” so the Italian people will have “the opportunity to get rid of their pro-EU establishment”.
Leading figures in Ukip and M5S are already on first name terms. The two parties came together in the European Parliament in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy grouping, with Mr Farage and M5S’ David Borrelli at the helm.
However, Welsh Ukip MEP Nathan Gill stresses that there are significant differences between the parties.
He said: “They are very pro-Europe and the EU. They are just anti the euro because they can see how it’s damaged [Italy and] the Italian banks and all of that.”
There is some scepticism as to how M5S could function in government if it ever wins power in Italy. One commentator noted that since 2013, 19 of M5S’ 109 members of the Chamber of Deputies had left the group.
Italians are familiar, even comfortable, with political instability. Mr Renzi is the 41st Italian PM since World War Two.
British voters are thought to treasure stability. This was a key justification for the founding of the Conservative Liberal-Democrat coalition.
But do the old rules of UK politics still apply? A majority of the country’s voters defied the leaders of industry, those at the top of the traditional parties of power, and a chorus of celebrities to vote for Brexit.
It’s possible that British voters now consider the idea of jumping into the unknown as something exciting rather than foolhardy, an adventure to be embraced rather than a danger to be avoided.
If so, a charismatic and internetsavvy leader might try to sew an extraordinary political patchwork quilt, bringing together eurosceptics and anti-fracking activists alongside supporters of sustainable transport and passionate deregulators in a movement for very radical change.