‘A love-burst’: how Sunak and Meloni’s rapport is boosting hard-right agenda

For Sunak, Meloni is an ally inside the EU with a shared interest in hardline immigration policies. For Meloni, Sunak helps make her extremist roots seem more distant. Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images

One cut her political teeth on the streets of Rome as a teenage neo-fascist activist, rising to become Italy’s first female premier. The other is a former investment banker who became Britain’s wealthiest prime minister, and its first of colour.

Yet whatever their very different backgrounds, the ties between Giorgia Meloni and Rishi Sunak are likely to grow even closer on Saturday when he attends a rightwing political festival in Rome organised by her hardline Brothers of Italy party.