Some call it ‘populism’, I call it ‘democracy’

I don’t know how you feel about such things, but European politics these days is starting to look like a 10-pin bowling tournament on TV. One second there’s a neat little formation of shiny European Prime Ministers – all moulded along broadly the same ideological values, looking alike, dressing alike, talking alike, and all strategically positioned according to a strict pyramidal hierarchy... and the next thing you know: KA-PLONK! Off they all spin: reeling, collapsing and rebounding off each other as a giant bowling ball called ‘democracy’ comes crashing into their midst. 

It’s been happening an awful lot lately, and the trend looks set to continue. Italy’s Matteo Renzi was the latest example; and up to a point, his demise as a skittle mirrored that of the UK’s David Cameron a few months earlier. The two referendums were admittedly fought on vastly different issues – Brexit was a direct vote on EU membership; Italy’s ostensibly had nothing to do with Europe at all – but the way they were handled was all but identical, and so was the political fall-out.

Both Prime Ministers took the unprompted decision to hold a referendum on an issue where they knew (or should have known) that they stood on perilous terrain; both clearly misread the popular mood, and – most crucial of all – both deliberately chose to tie their own political fate to the outcome.

That’s roughly where the resemblance ends, because their reasons and circumstances were hardly comparable. Cameron was bound by an electoral promise to put EU membership to a referendum; and though he briefly retracted his pledge to resign, the truth was that it was impossible for him to realistically survive. Brexit may have been about the UK’s future as an EU member state... but inevitably, the result was also a verdict on Cameron himself. His main EU policy platform was rejected, and his own mishandling of the campaign was widely blamed for the result. He had to go.

Renzi’s case is different and (as tends to be the case with Italian politics) considerably more complex. The referendum itself aimed to alter the Constitution in a way that would affect the balance of power between the country’s two houses of parliament. Renzi’s stated reason for wanting to do this is that the present system is too cumbersome to allow any government the luxury of actually governing. And clearly, he has a point: as has been repeated online ever since the result, Italy has had over 60 governments in the last 70 years. The last one has been in place since February 2014.... which actually makes it one of the longer-lived specimens.

But it was (and still is) hugely debatable whether this inherent political instability is caused directly by the Constitutional balance of powers. We tend to forget that Italy wasn’t a unified country at all until as recently as the late 19th century; and that past efforts to keep the previously warring regions together also produced a fascist dictatorship with disastrous long-term consequences for the country.

This brings us to a very interesting paradox. It was to avoid a repeat of the Mussolini experience that post-war Italy hit on the final version of the parliamentary model that Renzi tried to change this week. And the referendum took place against the backdrop of a very visible, very audible resurgence of Italian fascism today.

Put these two together, and it suddenly becomes easy to see why a staggering 59.2% would politely tell Renzi where to stuff his reform proposal. The Prime Minister may have been motivated by a desire to make a hopelessly impossible system more manageable... but he doesn’t have the power to prevent other governments from one day inheriting that system. So his reform could easily have strengthened future far-right coalitions, of the kind that now seem very likely. 

Considering where they’re coming from in the past 100 or so years, you can hardly blame Italians for being sceptical. They might easily have concluded that a politically unmanageable Italy is still preferable to an Italy managed by strong and powerful whackos.

As for Renzi’s resignation (which at the moment of writing seems to have been put into temporary storage), that arose directly from his own very conscious decision to accept the result as a verdict on himself. With hindsight it may seem suicidal; but I think he was right to do so, for at least three very good reasons.

The first is that Renzi’s government was not strictly elected by popular vote; he became party leader through a successful parliamentary coup in 2014, and was appointed to form a new government by the President. That might make it a perfectly legitimate government, according to Italian law... but Renzi would surely have felt the need of a proper mandate, to push forward an agenda that was at best divisive.

A Yes win would have given him that mandate and consolidated his hold on power. But you have to take the rough with the smooth: and Renzi ended up losing his mandate instead of strengthening it.

The second reason is the one given by Renzi himself. I find it entirely plausible that he simply didn’t want to continue in a farcical position he earlier described as a ‘puppet prime minister’. Strange as this may sound in the local context: some politicians do actually have a modicum of self-respect. They don’t always cling to powerless power for its own sake.

I mentioned three reasons, and the third is naturally the debatable one. Reactions all over the internet have placed Italy’s referendum in the ‘protest vote’ category: suggesting that the No vote was aimed primarily at removing Renzi as an end in itself, rather than rejecting his reform. This is certainly applicable to some, if not all his political adversaries: who were naturally licking their lips at the opportunity Renzi so unwisely (from this perspective) chose to give them. But then again, his opponents do not represent a unified front: far from it, they include the unlikeliest of political bedfellows imaginable. Extreme left, extreme right, anarchists, political control-freaks... that is not, nor ever can be, the basis for a long-term concerted political movement.

Opposition to Renzi’s reform, then, cannot be made to translate into support for any of his rivals: even if they are all anti-establishment in different ways. Certainly, not all the 59.2% will go on to support the Lega Nord or Beppe Grillo’s (largely antithetical) M5S... some may even have voted No to limit these parties’ powers if they ever do end up part of a government.

So no: I myself do not see Renzi’s defeat as a ‘protest vote’ at all. Nor has it anything to do with that other tired old chestnut, ‘populism’. There are far more plausible reasons to account for such a large majority, other than a rejection of Renzi as an end in itself. But the label still perversely makes sense, because it tells us a lot about the people using it.

In its simplest form, the attitude is that any electoral result that runs counter to these people’s own opinion in the matter, is automatically a ‘protest vote’: as though the vast majority of Italian voters went to the polls last Sunday specifically to piss them off, and to not to reject a Constitutional reform at all.

Even worse, the approach smacks of incredible condescension. It is as though electoral support for the shiny, smiley, mass-produced European ‘skittle-politician’ is somehow ‘de rigueur’... and any attempt to break up their painstakingly-constructed pyramidal formation is an act of treason against the democratic process.

Actually, however, it’s the other way round. If democracy looks like 10-pin bowling, it’s because that’s how it should work in practice. The same people, with the same ideas, should not permeate the structures of power indefinitely. They should not feel entitled to, either; nor should they be too smug and complacent in the conviction that their own political convictions are automatically preferable to anyone else’s.

Like Renzi and Cameron, they should just politely bow out without a fuss when the democratic process works against them. Otherwise, we will end up with a Soviet-style democracy, where you can only vote for establishment-approved politicians with establishment-approved policy-platforms; and where to have a contrary opinion is to be a subversive troublemaker.