Ping, went my phone. Ping. Ping. There was an influx of messages. They ranged from “TURN ON THE NEWS!” in capital letters to, “Oh Christ, here we go again.” Starmer resigns, read the breaking news banner.
Living in Italy for the past nine years and coming from turquoise Essex, I had only heard complaints about the departing prime minister and what a terrible job he was doing.
It is a fairly impressive feat when you consider that the six prime ministers before the latest six (Brown, Blair, Major, Thatcher, Callaghan, and Wilson) spanned over 36 years, not 10. But what did surprise me was how united the comments were from my Italian counterparts, telling me how similar my two homes are.
“Wow, it’s really looking bad over there,” my friend Giulia said, laughing. “It’s almost like you guys are like us.”
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“Welcome to the club,” quipped another. “In a few years your prime minister will have a bromance with Putin too.” It was a reference to the once very close relationship between Silvio Berlusconi and the Russian dictator.
“I thought the UK would have been better than that,” said another. “Perhaps it’s not quite the powerhouse we are led to believe it is.”
While they have glaring similarities in terms of PM rotation, in some ways it looks less that Britain has become Italy, as that it has swapped roles with it. While we have been cycling through the prime ministers, Italy’s current PM, Giorgia Meloni, has stuck it out for four years.
But beyond the revolving door at the top, the comparison between the two seems flimsy. We’re not in the European Union. Our Upper House is larger than our smaller house. Theirs isn’t. We don’t have a constitution. They do. We have a first-past-the-post voting system. They don’t. Coalition governments are a rarity for us. For them, they’re the norm.
Befuddled by past articles from the Economist and the New Statesman, I went looking for expert opinion on what to me looked like a pointless comparison.
“The perception is that these days, Italy is one of the most stable countries in Europe, which is unusual for us,” said Fabrizio Tassinari of the European University Institute in Florence.
“But for the UK, the instability dynamic has come about ever since Brexit became part of the discussion.
“I think the UK is worse for it because it cannot control what is happening with Brexit nor single-handedly reverse it. So I would think the UK instability, all of a sudden, is much more dangerous than the Italian one, if you ask me.”
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In short, the UK’s issues around government instability are down to external factors that Britain cannot control, while Italy’s former issues were internal, and within its control.
And while voters in both countries are looking towards more populist, personality-driven parties, what with Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia and Roberto Vannacci’s up-and-coming Futuro Nazionale in Italy, and Reform and Restore in the UK, the Italian political system is able to exert much more of a moderating influence over politicians because of its constitution.
“We could even argue that Meloni’s government is almost the centrist conservative party. She would not be as popular if she stuck to her far right positions. I wouldn’t know what guardrails the UK would have in place if Nigel Farage came to power.”
“There’s a definite need for politicians in both countries to reconnect with voters, but in all other respects, it’s very difficult to compare Italy and the UK.”
Feeling a little less confused than before, I thought: let the people make their comparisons. The reality is that Britain is nowhere near being the new Italy. If anything, given our recent and unusual track record of burning through prime ministers with zero constitutional barriers to stop us, Italy should probably start worrying about turning into us.
Jessica Lionnel is a freelance journalist based in Rome
