Beppe Grillo and Nigel Farage are considering a Europarliamentary pact. Its as Faustian as could be, and here in Italy its making waves. M5S the ‘movement’ (woe betide anyone who calls it a politcial party), is about to commit political suicide at the behest of its leader Beppe Grillo. The notion of liquid democracy has solidified. Grillo went off to Brussels to meet his new best mate without the say so of the membership who vote online for these things, and unsurprisingly the membership aren’t happy. The M5S has a power base of young disaffected liberals, not the natural allies of UKIP. Nor will it be easy reconciling the basic tenets of M5S philosophy – state wage for all, getting rid of the present system, etc – Grillo has common ground on Europe – (stop interfering) and immigration (neither like it very much, but for different reasons). If Grillo goes ahead unilaterally there will be an internal uprising in the M5S – there are already alot of disaffected members following Grillo’s election campaign of insulting everyone. How UKIP will cope with a pact with the Ities is anyone’s guess. It’s all turning ugly.
Not quite as ugly as the war of words within Forza Italia. Berlo is trying to head off the irrresistible rise of Ubu Fitto, the young pretender – who wants primaries within the party. Berlo announces that Forza Italia ahs always been open and democratic, that it’s his party and he will do what he likes. Silvio doesnt quite see the contradiction there. His new lapdog – Toti – the ex head of news for TG4, one of Berlo’s tv stations is trying to consolidate his position and therefore disagrees with everything Fitto says.
And then there’s the RAI – Italian public telly – which ihas been showing a disgraceful ‘public information film’ about how it is the leader in Europe – thereby ignoring its statute of giving information. Helpfully ignoring all statistics, Rai tells us that it has the biggest audiences in Europe and has the lowest licence fee. It omits the fact that it has continual ad’s, makes only a few hours of telly and imports tat from everywhere else, lags miserably behind the Beeb and German public telly in its scope and achievements.
