If Italy is celebrating Renzi’s victory, the UK is dealing
with UKIP’s feared triumph in the European election. The Eurosceptic,
anti-immigration party came first with 24 MEPs, beating both Labour and the
Conservatives, not to mention the Liberal Democrats who only have one MEP now.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage has claimed several times that UKIP
would never go into any sort of alliance with Le Pen’s Front National, accusing
the French party of being “racist”. While more than a few people would argue
that UKIP is quite racist itself, Farage is playing clever politics by trying
to keep his distance.
The same cannot be said of Beppe Grillo. UKIP is openly a right-wing party, but Grillo’s M5S has always prided itself of being super partes, belonging neither to the left or the right. And because of this, Grillo has, in my view, made a very silly move by meeting Farage. The two leaders met yesterday for lunch in Brussels, and it looks like they really hit it off.
I mentioned this in my previous post: in Italy nobody seemed
to care if this was a European election and not a general one. They merely portrayed
it as a battle “Renzi vs Grillo”, since it is quite evident that now Renzi and
Grillo are the two main players and Berlusconi is far less influent than he
used to be. Even now everyone is trying to figure out where Grillo went wrong
in terms of electoral campaign. They mention things such as using tones
that sounded too harsh (his swearing, his referring to himself as being “beyond
Hitler”, his joke about vivisecting Berlusconi’s dog…). But again, nobody is
focusing on his positions about the EU. In a European election, are we sure
that those really mattered so little…?
Actually, the fact that M5S lost some of its electors could
also be linked to its refusal to decide which parliamentary group to join.
M5S activists kept claiming that they would gain enough MEP to create their own
group, but since this hypothesis was quite unlikely, I think some people feared that
they would end up not joining a group and therefore being in a very weak position,
incapable of influencing any decision. By joining forces with UKIP, M5S might
certainly be more likely to carry some weight in Brussels. However, this move is
not looking too popular in Italy, and it raises questions about the lack of internal
democracy in Grillo’s movement.
Grillo claimed that if the movement were to join any group,
it would do so following an online consultation with its members. But this did
not happen. Grillo flew to Brussels to meet Farage without consulting anyone,
and actually he wanted to keep their meeting a secret. In Italy people found
out about it because Grillo ran into the Northern League’s leader, Matteo Salvini,
at the airport, and Salvini tweeted that Grillo was on his plane. Today some
M5S activists are complaining about the meeting, claiming that UKIP is not
dissimilar from Front National and that M5S should stay away from such parties.
This doesn’t change the fact that the meeting already happened, and that Farage
and Grillo certainly liked each other.
Grillo claims he has no influence over M5S members, and indeed
he is not even a member of parliament. Yet he has, on several occasions,
expelled members, sometimes for trivial reasons such as going on TV without the
movement’s consent. And now, Grillo can meet other European leaders and discuss
possible alliances without anyone’s permission.
For now, one thing is quite clear. It’s true that M5S is not
left-wing and is not right-wing. It’s Beppe Grillo’s.
BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-eu-27611934
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