Around the World: Renzi, Last Man Standing

Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister of Italy, speaking at a university in October 2015. Photograph: Matteo Renzi a San Giobbe by the Università Ca' Foscari Venezia (License) (Cropped)

In Italy, the Left-Right dynamic that emerged over the last two decades finally seemed to have broken in favour of the Left. Silvio Berlusconi's powerful populist Centre-Right groupings lost ground at the 2013 elections and have struggled in the polls since - falling below even the anti-establishment party Movimento 5 Stella (M5S).

Meanwhile, polling had put the party of the Centre-Left, Partito Democratico, consistently ahead as the only party with a truly national mandate. Even despite having had three separate leaders since the election, Pierluigi Bersani, Enrico Letta and now Matteo Renzi, the Democratici have remained the only stabilising force in Italy's political mainstream.

Matteo Renzi, as leader of the Democrats, is the centre point for what little stability remains. Yet he has staked it all on winning a controversial constitutional referendum - with opposition to be found in all corners of Italian politics - making the plebiscite a vote of confidence in his continued leadership and job as Prime Minister (Politi, 2016).

If that were not enough, on top of Renzi's struggle to change the political and electoral systems, he also faces a battle with the European Union over the rules regarding how he can tackle Italy's National banking crisis (Sanderson & Alex Barker, 2016) - a crisis which, if it where ever to fully unravel, would dwarf the chaos into which Greece has been plunged.

Italy's major national banks are drained of funds, burdened by impossible debts - €400bn in bad loans - and need recapitalisation. EU rules say, however, that the government cannot buy out the banks of their debt (Guerrera et al, 2016), despite support for the policy from the European Central Bank (Jones, 2016), unless the burden falls first on investors.

But in Italy that is all but impossible. The largest share of the debts now weigh heavily upon its citizens, thanks to retail bond and investment schemes. That state of affairs has already caused tragedies, when problems at regional banks led to suicides after families lost hundreds of thousands in savings (Poggioli, 2016).

To force creditors to take the burden is to invite the collapse of Italy's biggest banks and destroy the lives of and impoverish its people. Renzi has expressed his intention to defy the EU and save Italy's banking sector, to protect particularly the country's ordinary savers.

Renzi's government also has ambitious and extensive welfare plans in the works to help those in poverty. Intended to begin in September, after a significant trial period, a programme would extend support for hundreds of thousands of families with children living in poverty, covering a million people to €320/month (Conte, 2016).

The €750mn/year investment, to be doubled as the programme goes forward is conditional on meeting educational and job searching objectives, to spread the governments aim of increasing 'income inclusion'. But it could make a massive difference for the most vulnerable.

But future action depends upon Renzi and the mandate of the Democrats surviving the referendum, which looks to be taking place in increasingly heated circumstances. Anti-establishment and anti-European sentiment seem to be rising hand in hand. The banking crisis and the intransigence of European institutions is not helping. It's no big surprise then that September's vote is being touted as the next big turning point for the future of European institutions after Greece and Brexit.

In that toxic atmosphere, Renzi has staked his efforts against his own position - not the Prime Minister's first act of brinkmanship as he tries to reorganise Italy, having made a similar move to pass same-sex unions (BBC, 2016). But the move stakes more than just his own career on the vote: Renzi is virtually the last man standing in the Italian political arena.

The Democrats are internally divided (La Repubblica, 2016) and only the anti-establishment, anti-elite and Eurosceptic populists M5S, who sit with UKIP in the European Parliament, have something approaching the national mandate to take over.

Making the matter personal by making it a vote on Renzi as well is a dangerous move, not least in this political climate - as former President Giorgio Napolitano stressed (Politi, 2016). It clouds motivations, particularly when Renzi is the central figurehead of the establishment, pushing through reforms that are each time controversial to some large group - from labour reforms (BBC, 2014) to same-sex unions, to the banking crisis currently unfolding - and likely only to feed anti-establishment populism.

Europe finds itself now, once more, with a crisis on it hands. The only leader with a modicum of a mandate is risking his position and the country's stability each time he tries to push through a reform. And yet even as Renzi takes on that task, he finds himself also pressured by the EU that would force him to act punitively against citizens by nullifying their investment savings.

The institutional rules themselves are in essence intended as pro-market anti-trust regulations, aimed at preventing state-corporate collusion, as a bulwark against corruption. For progressives - who want to see an open Europe where all parts cooperate in mutual support for the common good - to see them deployed to prevent the state from performing its basic duty to the people is disappointing.

If Renzi falls, Italy risks falling back into political paralysis, much as Spain has been by its electoral deadlocks. The fact so much has come to rest on the career of one politician should be a disconcerting warning to Europe of the need to find stable ground for all of its member states. Yet at present, Europe institutions seems unwilling or unable to respond positively. Europe's present system of legal authority without sufficient democratic accountability has alienated.

Reform is needed. The need is pressing to argue the case against the flaws of the present system and for the building of a better one. The Democrats were elected in Italy on the slogan 'Bene Comune' - the Common Good. It is long overdue time to start rebuilding Europe under the same words.

Tsipras has his governing mandate, but weariness and disaffection dominate the mood and demand a positive response

Alexis Tsipras has been returned to power in Greece. Photograph: Alexis Tsipras - Caricature, by Donkey Hotey (License) (Cropped)

Once again, reality has made a fool of the polls. Against all of the indications pointing to a tight and inconclusive contest, Alexis Tsipras and Syriza have once again secured the position as the largest party at the elections in Greece (Smith & Wearden, 2015).

For Syriza though, it won't be all smiles and celebrations. The election also showed the clear limits of Tsipras' style of popular radical democracy. Voter turnout has waned drastically, with people worn thin by crisis after crisis and exhausted by Victory or Death stand-offs with creditors.

Alexis Tsipras resignation, back in August, was a gambit that triggered an election, with the purpose of shoring up his parliamentary support (Smith, 2015) - and possibly in acknowledgement of public weariness. His party's numbers in parliament had been irreparably dented by the rebellion of the Left Platform faction over the signing, by the Syriza leader, of the bailout terms negotiated with the European Union (Henley & Traynor, 2015).

In the run up to the election, the power of Tsipras' populist approach and personal appeal, for which Tsipras has been criticised (Patrikarakos, 2015), appeared to be on the wane (Smith, 2015{2}) - in line with the general disaffection. Yet on election day, Tsipras and Syriza proved resilient. In that sense, his gambit was successful.

Victory gives to Tsipras the task of building a majority coalition. At one stage, Syriza's falling popularity made it necessary to float the possibility of a coalition with Pasok and To Potami - the establishment social democratic and social liberal parties, respectively - in a centre-left and pro-European alliance (Ruparel, 2015).

In the end, though, the scale of the victory matched that of January and will allow Tsipras to rebuild his coalition with ANEL (BBC, 2015). But this time, he will be able do so without the most rebellious of the factions within his own party. That group, the Left Platform, had split away to form up under their own banner as Popular Unity. They stood against Syriza in the election, only to lose every single one of their seats, falling beneath the parliamentary representation threshold (Nardelli, 2015).

Few of Syriza's other opponents fared much better (Malkoutzis, 2015). New Democracy, under their acting leader Vangelis Meimarakis, could not, in the end, close the gap to Syriza and finished over seven points adrift. No other party managed to collect more than 7% of the vote. When it came down to it, it did not seem to be that Tsipras had triumphed, so much as he had found himself as the last man standing.

Being the only credible option left has given the Syriza leader a strong position that he will need, as the task facing the victor doesn't offer much in the way of joy (Elliott, 2015). The second term Prime Minister now has implement the austerian conditions of the bailout agreement and, importantly, negotiate for debt relief - without which the country will plunge back into chaos.

Tsipras will also need his strong parliamentary position because the biggest winner of the night was not Syriza. With voter turnout down to just 56%, the mood in Greece is now clearly dominated by disaffection and weariness. Despite his emphatic victory, Tsipras will have to lead his Syriza government without the kind of popular public mandate he had enjoyed for the first half of 2015.

Until now, Tsipras has tried to follow a radical democratic course in which he aimed, it seemed, to use the popular mobilisation of the people as a powerful political bargaining chip. Yet Syriza's victories with this strategy were limited and, in the case of the OXI referendum vote, became little more than a pyrrhic demonstration of dissent in the act of compliance.

With the people clearly tired from the strain of the crisis and weary and frustrated by pyrrhic acts of dissent and defiance, Tsipras and Syriza - at least for the moment -  have exhausted their popular political capital. That fatigue will limit the hands that Tsipras will be able to play in his game of political poker with the European austerian establishment.

Tsipras idea of radicalism has long been about popular power (from Horvat, 2013).

"I believe that today 'radical' is to try to be able to take responsibility for the people, to not be afraid of that, and at the same time to maintain in the democratic road, in the democratic way. To take the power for the people and to give it back to the people."

He and his party must now, because the people are tired, instead show that they can use parliamentary power - and they must use it to restore the people's belief. Their disaffection and weariness need to be healed with hope and opportunity, because, in the long run, a political crisis can be as dangerous to Greece as the economic crisis that currently engulfs it.

As the dissenting economist Yanis Varoufakis has made clear (Varoufakis, 2015; Luis Martin, 2015), the collapse of the mainstream systems into crisis does not, and has never, benefited a rational and progressive Left. Crisis breeds fear and fear feeds narrow and extreme responses.

Tsipras has his mandate, but the big challenge is still ahead. He must rebuild the economy and visibly tackle the old corrupt establishments, both in Greece and in Europe. And he must, above all, find a way to show people in Greece and Europe a positive and reforming way forward.