A marriage of convenience just ended.
The 5 Star Movement (M5S), Salvini’s coalition partner, attempted to derail a high-speed rail link that the League (Lega) wanted.
M5S failed, but that is the end of the coalition as Salvini Calls for Snap Elections.
What is the dispute about?
Political clashes over the project for a railway between the Italian city of Turin and French city of Lyon led Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to put tenders on hold in March.
The multibillion-euro TAV (Treno Alta Velocità) link involves digging a 58km (36-mile) tunnel through the Alps. It is bitterly opposed by Five Star on environmental and cost grounds.
Supporters of the project say it would halve the travel time between the two cities to just two hours. The tunnel would also make it possible to travel from Paris to Milan in around four hours, down from nearly seven.
The project was launched 20 years ago and part of it has already been dug. It is scheduled for completion in 2025.
Why the Dispute?
On the surface, it is surprising that a leftist party in a country with huge unemployment would be against such a project. But here is the answer.
M5S wants projects in Southern Italy.
The League (used to be called the Northern League), wants projects in the North.
Guess where the tunnel is?
Junior Partner No Longer
The League is the junior partner in the coalition based on the last election. It will be the senior partner in a different coalition following the next election if not an outright winner.
Last Elections
Marriage Not Made in Heaven
M5S is a leftist party while the League is anti-immigration, anti-Euro right-wing party with different political priorities.
The coalition lasted as long as it did because they found common anti-immigration ground coupled with M5S’ dislike of its other coalition possibilities.
Italian election math is complicated. The League might need another coalition partner but it may not have to top the 50% mark to have a solid majority.
Forza Italia, is a traditional ally, but Salvini might not want to deal with Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the current head of Forza Italia.
Vulture Politics and Sinking Ships
Reuters offers this interesting comment about Vulture Politics:
“Italian politicians have a long tradition of switching parties — in the last legislature almost 350 of the 945 parliamentarians changed sides for various reasons. They also have a habit of abandoning sinking ships.”
Elections When?
Parliament is in recess and the President, Sergio Mattarella, largely a figurehead except in matters like this, needs to confirm there is no longer a coalition government that works.
Immigration Policy
Three days ago, Bloomberg reported Salvini Eyes Enhanced Powers as Italy Government Wins Key Vote.
A recently passed bill gives Italy’s police and military enhanced powers to stop and seize rescue vessels picking up illegal migrants in the Mediterranean. In addition to serving as one of Italy’s two deputy premiers, Salvini also runs the interior ministry, which controls the country’s police and border forces.
Parallel Currency and Budget Deficits Back In Play
In addition to immigration policy, Salvini wants tax cuts and more spending.
Salvini has also threatened to issue a parallel currency.
These issues and more will again return to the front burner.
The EU will not be pleased, to say the least.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
From what I’ve heard, new Italian elections might be held as early as mid-October — aka before England’s hard brexit. Circumstances would have to be just right, but its plausible. More likely, elections would be middle to late November, leaving little time for whatever new government to come up with a “balanced” budget that the EU will find plausible and Italian voters won’t rebel against the new government.
Lega doesn’t care what the EU thinks, and they have made that clear. Perhaps they might make soothing noises to Brussels if it keeps this Lyon tunnel project going. Perhaps they just hire people to build the Italian side, and leave it as a tunnel to nowhere until Macron gets overthrown. The yellow vest movement in France isn’t going away.
The next Italian government will have to implement a nasty VAT tax increase to comply with Brussels, the tax is hugely unpopular and damaging to the Italian economy. The new government will “temporarily postpone” this dumb idea, much like England kept “temporarily postponing” Brexit.
Lega / Salvini are already floating the idea of an Italian currency to (ahem) live along side the Euro. That is supposedly “temporary” too.
So when does Italy leave the EU?
“Will new elections achieve anything?”
I certainly hope so – I am rooting for and expect Chaos – with a major confrontation with the EU
That would be both an achievement and progress
Anything that adds to Brussel’s problems is no bad thing.
“Government-built transportation projects are socialist.”
On the surface, it is surprising that a leftist party in a country with massive unemployment would be against such a project. But here is the answer.
M5S wants projects in Southern Italy.
The League (used to be called the Northern League – Lega Nord – but dropped the Nord), wants projects in the North.
Guess where the tunnel is
And wouldn’t a train between Italy and France promote immigration and a united Europe, which League is against?
“I’m looking at a map. I must be missing something. Seems its being built in the right place. Are they talking about a more expensive and longer tunnel and scrapping what’s been done?”
Much shorter tunnel – through rock instead of twists and turns over mountains
Will new elections achieve anything?
Freedom to change very much of anything in Italy is limited whilst the nation is in the EZ and the EU. Any real change can only come about by changing that.
Lega / Salvini has already proposed a “new Lira” (my name, because officially it hasn’t been named yet). For political purposes, the new Lira is “temporary” but anyone who can spell “history” knows it will become permanent and replace the Euro (within Italy) sooner or later.
Seems like Italy is already signaling they will exit the EU next, and probably pretty soon
I don’t have an issue with the tunnel. Things are going to fall apart one way or another. Better to fall apart with a tunnel than without a tunnel. Wasting money on a tunnel is far better than wasting money on munitions.
Yeah it is not the tunnel anyway, it is just the location of the tunnel, one side wants it to benefit northern cities and the other wants that money spent in the south. As long as they are dealing with invented wealth/EU fiat they might as well double the budget and build both.
“M5S is a leftist party…”
Government-built transportation projects are socialist.
Since privately built transportation projects don’t exist, I guess we are all socialists.
Yup.
Transportation is just one side effect of being under the jackboot of a standing army, which budding non-socialists are too pathetically disarmed to have a proper veto over.
So now, we have no meaningful private militias, no meaningful non-government currencies, no freedom of speech extending beyond that which government wishes to censor, no freedom to route around whatever arbitrary idiocy some apparatchik claims is a “law” or “regulation”, no freedom to build neither homes nor roads without Party permission, no ability to reject beig dragged into kangaroo courts in order to enrich ambulance chasers, and no freedom to do darned near anything at all, aside from what the Politburo feels aggrandizes their useless selves properly.
So, being stuck walking like ducks and quackking like ducks….
Since privately built transportation projects don’t exist – Huh? My car is a private car, pretty much free of state involvement.
In some countries the roads and bridges a private tolled roads. Planes owned by private companies ferry passengers across the sky.
Seems to me transport projects are a mix of private and state ones.
Try driving that car from San Francisco to Portland without government built “socialist” roads. Toll roads are an abomination, they offer transportation but only to those that can afford the tolls. And the tolls are always set high enough that only the top half can afford them on a regular basis. I remember working in SF when I lived in the North Bay, the toll was 50 cents and was supposed to by law be toll free once the bridge building bonds were paid off. But the SF municipal railway that built BART and ran the buses maintained the tolls and increased them as a support for “mass transit,” which did not extend up to Sonoma County because Marin County blocked extension of BART through their lands, they did not want lowly wage grubbing “commuters” in Marin. So we had to drive hwy 101 over the GG Bridge to get to work. The GG Bridge now charges $8.35 to cross, if you work 21 days per month that is $175.35 per month just to get over the bridge. The PEOPLE paid for the bridge, it was not a socialist project, they said they had to have this bridge and they got together and floated bonds to pay for it’s construction, it was worth every penny in it’s esthetics alone, even had not one vehicle passed over it.
People that claim all public goods are socialist and that all taxes are theft really ought to be allowed not to pay any taxes, they also should not be allowed to use any goods or services like clean water, garbage dumps, sewers, airports, roads, schools/universities, hospitals, or benefit from any government research that led to advances like medicines and vaccines, or to have use of the 4G or other cell technology, or be defended by our troops (I suppose that means deporting them) they should not be able to access weather data, or stock markets, or use telephones, or airspace.
What you people are is nothing less than leeches on the rest of society, you are the same racists that claim brown and black people are welfare garbage yet it is you that is the free rider. I say get the hell out of my country.