Vannacci's far-right rise challenges Meloni as Italy marks key milestone

Giorgia Meloni’s administration has become the longest-lasting in Italy since the second world war — a milestone the prime minister is determined not to let pass without recognition.

In the port district of Bari, capital of the southern Italian region of Puglia, where Meloni hosted the G7 in 2024 and where she spends her summer holiday, preparations are well advanced for a festival-style presentation of her rightwing government.

On Friday, food trucks, refreshment points and traditional Puglian light displays will form part of the celebrations intended to entertain an anticipated crowd of 10,000 people transported in from across Italy. Activists from the youth wing of Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party have been spreading through the city’s squares and beaches for days, distributing flyers promoting the celebrations while wearing T-shirts featuring the official slogan: Il Governo più stabile, l’Italia più forte (the most stable government, the strongest Italy).

Meloni, who just a few weeks ago was booed at the opening ceremony of the Mediterranean Games in Taranto, further south in Puglia, will speak to the audience in the evening, flanked by her coalition allies — Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League, and conservative Forza Italia’s Antonio Tajani.

“This moment will be written in the history books,” said Michele Picaro, a Brothers of Italy MEP and former Bari councillor. “We are the longest government in the history of the Italian Republic and this must be celebrated.”

Beneath the triumph, however, Meloni’s position is less assured. She has enjoyed a political stability that escaped her predecessors. Brothers of Italy is still the country’s biggest party. Yet in recent months, the political landscape has shifted with the appearance of a challenger — not from the left or the centre, but from someone even further to the right than Meloni.

Since its launch in February, Roberto Vannacci, a former army general, has seen his far-right party, Futuro Nazionale, climb to about 8% in the polls, overtaking his former colleagues in the League months ago and this week surpassing Forza Italia as well.

Vannacci first entered the public eye in 2023 after self-publishing a book filled with racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism. The backlash cost him his army position, but propelled him to the top of the bestsellers list. Helped by substantial coverage in the Italian press, he capitalised on the notoriety and in 2024 was elected as an MEP for the League, later leaving Salvini’s party to establish his own.

“I read his book because I always think you need to know the enemy,” said Giulia Pastorella, an MP and vice-president of the small centrist party Azione. “And I thought, ‘this is exactly the kind of thing you might hear people talking about in the bar.’ Here’s a military man, who is really a mirror of the worst impulses of people. The scary thing is, I think he’s genuine and not a PR construct.”

His policies are extreme. Futuro Nazionale’s recently published manifesto states that “abortion is not a right” and calls for gay people to be banned from television between 6am and 11pm so that children are not exposed to what it labels “homosexualist” content. It also proposes introducing military education in high schools and a “remigration” plan to remove irregular immigrants and foreign nationals who commit crimes.

On foreign policy, Vannacci has campaigned to halt weapons and financial aid to Ukraine, saying if he could choose between Vladimir Putin or the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he would choose Putin.

In July, he organised a “Futuristic Triathlon” in the northern seaside town of Sanremo, presented as an event to “temper the mind and body” in an echo of the fascist aesthetics and themes of the Mussolini era.

Far from being treated as a pariah, however, Vannacci’s party has proved moderately successful, attracting defectors from the three main ruling coalition parties. It is also actively courting disillusioned voters from the Five Star Movement, a key ally in a broad but perennially fractious leftwing coalition led by the Democratic party.

For the government, he represents a dilemma. Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy has neofascist roots, has governed more moderately than many had expected, cultivating a pragmatic and, crucially, pro-Ukraine image abroad while still using hardline rhetoric on choice occasions for domestic audiences.

That positioning, however, has left a vacuum on the far-right that Vannacci has filled. The question now is: how will Meloni respond? Until now her ruling coalition had mostly coasted along, propped up by a strong parliamentary majority. Her government is largely regarded as having been fiscally prudent, but has avoided major structural reforms. Instead, it has heavily focused on security and continues to vigorously expand legislation on law and order.

“This government has wasted the huge occasion that stability gave them,” said Lia Quartapelle, an MP with the Democratic party. “None of the core issues have been addressed — we have stagnant productivity and growth, salaries that have lagged behind for many years and an education system that is not up to the pace.”

Pastorella said a focus on foreign policy had also contributed to Vannacci’s success. “Meloni hasn’t really done much at home but has been very present abroad,” she added. “The Italian electorate is tired of talking about foreign policy and would rather discuss national politics — this is precisely what Vannacci has understood.”

Picaro, the Brothers of Italy MEP, dismissed questions about recent polls. “This is a government that is more used to working than looking at percentages,” he said, citing lower unemployment, reduced irregular immigration, tax cuts for the self-employed and an initiative in the south to boost entrepreneurial investment.

Pastorella said that, far from being strong and stable, Meloni had struggled to keep her coalition united while dealing with various scandals, including ones that led to both a tourism and a culture minister being forced to resign.

With the possibility of an election as early as April, time is now of the essence for the prime minister. In recent weeks she has returned to hardline rhetoric, most notably in her reaction to the influx of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish north African enclave of Ceuta.

She is also trying to push through a highly contentious electoral law that would give a majority bonus to any alliance winning more than 42% of the vote, which critics say is designed to increase her group’s chance of victory.

If Vannacci continues to strengthen, Meloni might be tempted to accommodate him before the vote, a move that would risk repelling moderate supporters. Or she could clinch a post-election pact to maintain power, resulting in what many both inside and outside Italy would see as a frightening shift to the extreme right.

As government supporters head to Bari, Alessandro Cattaneo, an MP with Forza Italia, thinks it won’t come to that. “We in Forza Italia believe that Vannacci is too far removed from our political culture,” he said. “It would not be possible to govern with him … the coalition needs to continue to work seriously for the remainder of this administration and explain better to people what we have done. The best antidote to the extreme right is to show our seriousness.”