Giorgia Meloni’s not-so-scary right-wing government

People like labels, and it has always been easy to attach them to Giorgia Meloni, prime minister of Italy since October 2022. She has routinely been dubbed a neo-fascist by her political enemies in Italy and by alarmed liberals across Europe. It doesn’t help that her party, the Brothers of Italy, descends in part from a post-war neo-fascist group, or that its party symbol includes a tricolour flame with questionable antecedents. In the run-up to the election she won, the spread between Italian and German government debt widened, owing to fears that she would pick fights with Brussels and maybe even destabilise the euro itself. She might, critics feared, team up with Hungary’s strongman, Viktor Orban, the nationalist right in Poland and Marine Le Pen in France to cause all sorts of trouble. But 15 months in, Ms Meloni seems to be conventional rather than a wrecker.Consider, first, all the things that have not happened. Social policy has remained unaltered, despite the Brothers’ hostility to abortion and gay civil unions. It is true that there has been no progress towards gay marriage or same-sex adoption; but neither has there been any backsliding, despite this being Italy’s most right-wing government since the second world war. Italy’s first female prime minister does not profess to be a feminist, but she is a tough single mother who unceremoniously dumped her partner for propositioning his female colleagues.