When the rightwing mayoral candidate in Lucca sought backing from the former leader of a neofascist movement, rivals on the left thought it would be enough to send a shiver down the spines of voters in the Tuscan city, one of the Italian left’s last strongholds.
They were wrong. After a decade in power, the centre-left Democratic party (PD) was ousted, part of a wave of defeats over the past 12 months that has seen the Italian left’s version of the “red wall” crumble.
