Millions of Italians will focus their attention on Wednesday on Milan’s great cathedral, as Silvio Berlusconi is given a state funeral in the city he made his power base for over 30 years. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who is expected to attend, has already paid tribute to the original populist leader, who brought Italy’s far right in from the cold in the 1990s. Her thoughts may now be starting to turn to the new political possibilities that the death of Mr Berlusconi at the age of 86 has opened up.
One of the many baleful consequences of the Berlusconi era was the re-emergence of the far right in Italian public life. The tycoon entered politics for cynical reasons – primarily to use power to stymie legal investigations into his media empire. But in order to win power in 1994, his centre right Forza Italia party (FI) joined forces with the National Alliance (AN). A successor party to the pro-Mussolini Italian Social Movement, the AN became a junior coalition partner in government. When Mr Berlusconi triumphed again in 2008, he made Ms Meloni, then an AN deputy, the youngest minister in Italian history.
After her autumn election triumph as leader of the Brothers of Italy party, Ms Meloni was able to reverse roles, as FI became part of her radical right government, along with Matteo Salvini’s League. Mr Berlusconi’s passing now gives her a chance to colonise the more centrist political terrain he vacates. After operating mainly as a personal vehicle for his ambitions, rather than as a normal political party, it is unclear if FI can survive without him. One influential founder of the movement has suggested that the movement’s electoral base has already migrated towards Ms Meloni, who has cultivated a more moderate image during her first months in office.
An effective takeover of Italy’s centre-right by Ms Meloni would complete the process of normalisation first facilitated by Mr Berlusconi in the 1990s. It would also consolidate Ms Meloni’s position as the most powerful ultra-nationalist leader in Europe, at a time when fellow travellers are making significant political headway elsewhere. In snap elections next month in Spain, the radical right Vox party has a good chance of emerging as power broker with a role in the next government, while in Germany an alarming recent poll put Alternative für Deutschland in second place, ahead of the governing Social Democrats. A common agenda – uniting a draconian approach to migration, scepticism towards the green transition and a hostility towards diversity – is emerging, which Ms Meloni hopes to make count in Brussels.
Mr Berlusconi’s scurrilous brand of politics was defined by the naked pursuit of self-interest, combined with a flair for showmanship and a brazen contempt for legal and moral norms. His opportunism opened the door to darker influences, which had previously been ostracised in postwar Italy. As Wednesday’s funeral brings an era of political history to an end, and Ms Meloni woos the mainstream vote that Mr Berlusconi once made his own, the far-reaching consequences of this act of enabling are yet to play themselves out.