Good morning. Two big stories have broken overnight, and they don’t make for a happy Monday, I’m afraid.
First, the pound, news which belongs in the “life comes at you fast” bucket. On Friday, the value of sterling crashed to below $1.09 in response to Kwasi Kwarteng’s non-budget. Yesterday, Kwarteng said he was focused on the “longer term and the medium term” and hinted at further tax cuts to “get this country moving”.
Well, he’s got it moving all right: the Asian markets heard what he had to say and promptly took the pound to just $1.03, an all-time low against the dollar. For one measure of how bad this is, consider this line from one trader quoted in Graeme Wearden’s story: “It’s a case of shoot first and ask questions later, as far as UK assets are concerned.”
Graeme has the very latest on this news in the business live blog, warning of a “volatile day ahead” as European markets open, and we’ll return to it in First Edition soon. But today’s newsletter is about the latest instalment in another troubling story: the success of the radical right in Europe.
Last night, a coalition led by the Brothers of Italy – a post-fascist party that blames immigrants for Italy’s economic problems, opposes abortion and gay adoption, and traces its roots to Benito Mussolini’s Italian Social Movement – swept to power in Italy’s elections. Party leader Giorgia Meloni is likely to become Italy’s first female prime minister.
After the headlines, the Guardian’s Rome correspondent, Angela Giuffrida, tells us what just happened – and Nimo Omer hears from an expert in the European radical right about how we got here.
Five big stories
Labour conference | Keir Starmer is seeking to draw new battle lines with Liz Truss by vowing to reinstate the top rate of income tax and ploughing the ensuing billions into the NHS and other public services. Starmer said he would not reverse the cut to the basic tax rate from 20% to 19%.
Iran | Iranians have taken to the streets for a 10th consecutive night to protest against the death of Mahsa Amini in defiance of a warning from the judiciary. At least 41 people have died since the unrest began, but sources say the real figure is higher.
Ukraine | America and its allies will act “decisively” if Russia uses a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday. Sullivan said that “any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia”.
Conservatives | Liz Truss’s chief of staff is understood to have been promised that his company would run the Tories’ next election campaign if he joined her No 10 operation. Sources claimed the arrangement was a precondition of Mark Fullbrook taking the job.
Monarchy | British television channels are in a battle with the monarchy over who controls the historic record of Queen Elizabeth II’s commemorations, after Buckingham Palace insisted broadcasters could retain only an hour of footage for future use.
In depth: ‘Ambiguity is key to understanding Meloni’
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What happened last night?
The Brothers of Italy have held strong opinion poll leads for weeks, and those figures were borne out by last night’s forecasts. With full results due on Monday, an exit poll for Italian broadcaster Rai gave the rightwing coalition 41-45% against 25.5-29.5% for the leftwing bloc. The populist Five Star Movement was on 13.5-17.5%.
Early on Monday morning, projections based on well over half the votes counted put the Brothers of Italy on almost 26%, up from just 4% in the last national election in 2018. Meloni’s main ally, Matteo Salvini’s League, picked up around 9% of the vote, down from more than 17% four years ago. The other major conservative party, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, also scored around 8%, leaving Brothers of Italy the dominant rightwing coalition partner.
“It looks like they [the rightwing coalition] have control of both houses of parliament,” Angela Giuffrida said. On a turnout of 64% – about nine points down on the last election in 2018 – “it’s a very good result for the right. Now Meloni will get the mandate to form a government.”
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Why is Meloni popular?
Pietro Castelli Gattinara, an expert in European radical right movements who is Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at Sciences Po and associate professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, told Nimo that Meloni has “found a way to strike an equilibrium between being more radical than most of her counterparts, but also more credible”.
“So she’s trying to be more radical than the centre-right parties, notably with respect to issues like gender, abortion, civil rights. She’s got very radical positions on immigration, but at the same time, she’s also built credibility as a politician when it comes to international relations.”
He noted that while she has “kept an ambiguous position with respect to Russia and the US”, and has been critical of the EU, “over the past months, we’ve seen her taking much milder, more moderate positions … Rather than campaigning for votes, she was basically campaigning on convincing international observers and international markets that she could be a reliable prime minister.”
That’s a matter of sheer practicality: as Angela told us last week, Italy is the biggest beneficiary of the European Covid-19 recovery fund, and Meloni needs that money to revive the country’s economy.
For more on Meloni’s loyalty to Hungary’s autocratic prime minister Viktor Orbán – among the first to congratulate her last night – and the “dog-whistles to her neo-fascist political ancestors”, see this chilling piece by Roberto Saviano. And for a deeper look at the woman likely to be the new Italian prime minister, see Angela’s profile from last week.
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Who voted for Brothers of Italy?
Castelli Gattinara said there were two distinct aspects to Brothers of Italy’s support: “One is the radical right component, and that’s basically the part of the electorate that at different points in Italian history has voted for parties that organised themselves within far-right ideologies. But the other component is that citizens are dissatisfied with all other options that are on the table.”
Other populist parties have all joined governing coalitions at some point since 2018, he added: “This is simply the option that has not been tested yet by the Italian electorate.”
Another aspect of Brothers of Italy’s success: disarray on the left, which has failed to assemble a plausible alternative coalition. For more on that, and a familiar story of how the Democratic party “became a middle-class, professional party and lost touch with the working class,” see this piece in the Observer by Julian Coman.
“What Meloni’s managed to do is tap into this sense of despondency with the other options,” Angela said. “We’re not saying 26% of Italians are all extremists – but there’s this sense of hopelessness.”
“Whoever I spoke to on Sunday, whether it was professors or voters, said the same thing: she’s someone new. What we’ve seen in recent years suggests the only way a party like hers stays popular is in opposition.”
For more on how Meloni has persuaded working-class voters to turn away from the left, take a look at what Angela told us for this August First Edition.
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How do Brothers of Italy compare with other radical right parties in Europe?
Castelli Gattinara sees the success of the radical right in Europe as a story of continuity, not revolution. He emphasised that while Brothers of Italy’s popularity is new, “there’s not really a rise in far-right politics … a radical right party has been part and parcel of rightwing government coalitions [in Italy] since 1994.” That is different from, for example, France, where “it is absolutely inconceivable for any political party to build up alliances with the Rassemblement National”.
Nonetheless, the FN’s continuing presence as a force in French politics has led to their ideas “permeating the programmes of other political parties”. And that points to what Italy has in common with other European countries, like Sweden, where a bloc including the far-right Sweden Democrats won power earlier this month. (See this First Edition for more about that).
Across Europe, Castelli Gatinarra said: “We are witnessing a general process of the mainstreaming of the far right. It has become much more difficult to actually set far-right parties and ideas apart from the ideas and the policies that are proposed by non far-right parties.”
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What happens now?
If everything goes smoothly, Meloni would be expected to form a government by the end of October. But while last night was undoubtedly a triumph for Brothers of Italy, it faces a tough road to forming a stable coalition, as Angela explains in this excellent analysis. Meloni must retain the support of Matteo Salvini’s League despite Salvini’s bitterness at being outshone by his rival on the far right – and Berlusconi is also rumoured to have reservations. With Salvini opposed to sanctions on Russia and Meloni supportive, tensions could flare up very fast.
Even once a government is formed, “it will not be easy for her to hold together,” said Angela. “Salvini is a difficult character to deal with, and he’s collapsed governments twice in the last few years.”
Whatever happens, though, “the alliances she’s formed on abortion rights, gay rights, immigration, all suggest we’re in for an antagonistic period. And even if this doesn’t last, it could have significant consequences. Culturally, it’s civil war.”
What else we’ve been reading
Martin Farrer tells the troubling story of the Chinese housing market as it crashes in real time. “In short, it resembles a Ponzi scheme,” Farrer writes, “where money taken from new investors is used to pay off existing clients in an ever-decreasing spiral to collapse.” Nimo
In the Observer, Peter Pomerantsev has an insightful piece on how Putin’s propaganda – which “drips with the pathos of martyrdom” – may be backfiring at home as news of a “partial” mobilisation sinks in. “The war in Ukraine was meant to be a movie, not a personal sacrifice,” he writes.
The new drama on Boris Johnson’s time in office, This England, will air on Wednesday. But Martha Gill argues that turning political events that happened so recently into a series is not only shortsighted, it also risks blurring the lines of fact and fiction. Nimo
Extracts from Alan Rickman’s diaries in Saturday magazine – with more in the Observer – are fascinating on his ambivalence about the Harry Potter movies, and enjoyably snarky about quite surprising people. John McEnroe tells him “no one likes” Greg Rusedski, and as for Labour grandee Charles Clarke: “never trust a man with two-day growth”. Archie
Tamsin Rose looked into the world of cosmetic injectables, which have been soaring in popularity. Rose spoke to dozens of Australian women who have used these injectables: some spoke of horror stories but others loved the results. The question remains, however, whether access should be so easy when the risk to mental and physical health is so high. Nimo
Sport
Athletics | Double Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge took 30 seconds off his own world marathon record with yet another extraordinary display in Berlin. Kipchoge crossed the line in 2hr 1min 9sec, beating second-placed Mark Korir by nearly five minutes.
Women’s Super League | Chelsea kickstarted their title defence with a comfortable but not altogether convincing 2-0 defeat of Manchester City to heap pressure on the City manager, Gareth Taylor. Meanwhile, Everton beat Liverpool 3-0 in front of a record crowd for a WSL fixture at Anfield.
Cricket | Pakistan levelled the Twenty20 series with England at 2-2 with three matches to play after a thrilling finish in Karachi. England scored 24 in the 18th over to make themselves favourites but lost their last three wickets in six balls.
The front pages
The merits or otherwise of Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cut plans take up the most column inches on today’s front pages. The Mirror goes big on Gary Neville’s view of them, ahead of his appearance at the Labour party conference today to back Keir Starmer. “Tax cuts for rich are immoral,” is the headline. The Guardian has an exclusive interview with Keir Starmer in which he pledges to reinstate the top rate of income tax and use the money to help public services. The i reports on “jitters” in Tory ranks about a further set of tax cuts for families hinted at by Kwarteng, after his mini-budget sparked a market rout.
The Mail reports most favourably on that mooted fresh round of cuts for families, calling it “Kwasi’s boost for families”. The Times says “Pay pain for workers as public sector squeezed”, warning Kwarteng that two years of real-term pay cuts could spell trouble at the next election. The Express says “Truss pledges to build world-beating economy”, while Metro goes for “Tax wars” with an images of Starmer v Truss. The Sun gives Kwarteng a postage stamp of space on the front but its splash is about a Married At First Sight contestant. The Telegraph looks abroad for its splash: “US will take ‘catastrophic’ action if Putin uses nuclear weapons”. The FT agrees, with “Kyiv allies warn Kremlin over Putin’s nuclear attack threats”.
Today in Focus
The secrets of Lake Mead and the drought exposing them
Drought and overuse have seen water levels drop more than 170ft since 1983, exposing the secrets lying below.
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
Sign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Edith Pritchett’s cartoons, the best Saturday magazine content and an exclusive look behind the scenes
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Getting into politics as a mother, and staying there, can be extremely difficult. To help combat this, MP Stella Creasy has set up a campaign called MotherRED. The aim is clear: to get more mothers into politics by giving those who run for office funding and support. The candidates in turn pledge to make family-friendly policies on paternity leave, flexible working and childcare provision a high priority.
One-third of the recipients who have received the grant, that is supposed to cover things like childcare when they’re in political meetings, are from ethnic minority backgrounds. Another third are single parents and 20% have children with special educational needs. “These are the voices that you are not hearing within politics,” says Creasy, “they are bringing direct immediate experience of the barriers that mums are facing, not just in public life, but across the economy.”
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
• This article was amended on 26 September 2022 to update the name of Rassemblement National (National Rally), the rebranded name of the far-right party formerly known Front National, in France.
