Italy's combative leader has produced its most stable government in decades

Body

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is on track to lead the country’s longest-serving government since the fall of the fascist regime in 1945, according to a profile published Saturday in the Wall Street Journal that examines how her pugnacious political style and pragmatic governing approach have produced stability in a nation long known for revolving-door governments.

Much of Europe is in turmoil. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has cycled through four prime ministers in less than two years. Germany’s government has seen its poll ratings collapse, with a far-right party now the country’s most popular. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he was stepping down this week, making him the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade. By contrast, Meloni’s government in Italy has endured.

“She can be very kind and warm,” Carlo Fidanza, a politician with Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party who has known her for decades, told the Journal. “But when it comes to standing up for her beliefs, and defending her dignity or that of her country, she doesn’t hold back. She is reasonable, but she can also be tough if you cross her.”

The 49-year-old prime minister, Italy’s first woman to hold the office, has cultivated a reputation for immediate, decisive action. In October 2023, after a hot mic captured her longtime partner—news anchor Andrea Giambruno, the father of her child—making sexist jokes off air, Meloni publicly announced the end of their nearly 10-year relationship in a social-media post the morning after the recordings leaked. “My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted nearly 10 years, ends here,” she wrote, thanking him for “giving me the most important thing in my life, which is our daughter Ginevra.”

The same decisiveness was on display last week when she traded barbs with Trump. After Trump asserted that Meloni had “begged” him for a picture at the Group of 7 Summit in France, she responded with a 33-second social video, visibly irate. “The statements by Donald Trump are completely made up,” she said. “I don’t know why the president of the United States behaves like this with his own allies. It’s a shame that he doesn’t have the same determination toward the enemies of the West.” (MSI previously reported that the feud escalated when Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV over the war in Iran, a red line for Catholic Italy.)

Meloni’s path to power began in far-right politics. As a teenager, she was a youth activist in the Italian Social Movement, founded by former members of Benito Mussolini’s fascist party after World War II. She entered parliament in 2006 as the youngest deputy speaker in Italian history, and two years later became the youngest minister. She founded her Brothers of Italy party in 2012. In the run-up to the 2022 elections, she released videos in multiple languages saying the Italian right “unambiguously” condemns the fascist regime’s suppression of democracy and antisemitic policies. After winning in a landslide, she adopted pro-NATO, pro-American and fiscally prudent positions, moderating her aggressive anti-European Union populism.

“As for my popularity, being your friend certainly has not helped,” Meloni said to Trump in her weekend statement. “I suggest you focus on yours.”

Brothers of Italy remains the country’s most popular party heading into parliamentary elections, likely next year. But Meloni’s coalition recently lost a key referendum on a constitutional reform, and a new far-right party led by a former army general is threatening to fracture her majority. Political analyst Lorenzo Pregliasco, founder of the polling firm YouTrend, told the Journal there is a saying in Italy: “Those who last the longest are those who don’t cause discontent. More than achieving substantial results, the political priority is to not create too much trouble.”

Meloni has indicated she does not intend to let the spat with Washington go too far. She has instructed her government ministers to attend the July 4 celebrations at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, according to members of her party. “These relationships don’t begin or end because of who happens to be in power at a particular moment,” she said in a televised interview Tuesday. “We sometimes talk about foreign policy as if it were ‘Temptation Island.’ Foreign policy is more complex than that.”