Italy's Populist Insurgents Are Collapsing
Five Star has been humiliated in regional elections. Its coalition partners in the League are profiting, but need to get their timing right on seizing power.
Five Star's rise in Italy was one of the most extraordinary political stories of the last decade. Its fall may be just as quick.
Photographer: ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFPThe Five Star Movement stunned the world with its sudden rise to the top of Italian politics. Its abysmal showing in a string of local elections suggests its downfall could be just as quick.
The populist party’s candidate finished in an embarrassing third place in a regional vote in Sardinia this week. Five Star didn’t even manage to reach 10 percent of the vote, leaving it behind the League, its right-wing government coalition partner, and the center-left Democratic Party. The scale of the defeat was astonishing. In the general election last march, the movement came first by a long distance in the region – collecting more than 40 percent of the vote.