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Rick Gore's avatar

“I do not advocate indiscriminate bombing of London to grow the UK economy.“ This has to be one of the best “to be sure” phrases of all time!

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Secret Squirrel's avatar

Truss seems less impressive than Giorgia Meloni.

What people don't get about Meloni is that she is driving the tricycle of three parties that have tended to share power as a coalition whenever the post-cold-war right wins elections in her country: the Berlusconi party, the League, and her "post-fascist" group. During the 90s and 2000s, the "post-fascist" leader Gianfranco Fini was Italy's foreign minister and considered by far the most respectable leader of the right-wing parties (including by the Economist and the NYT). It is embarrassing that her party is lineally descended from Mussolini, but everybody on the Italian right makes dumb statements about how Mussolini wasn't so bad. (He really wasn't as bad as Hitler but that is an embarrassing thing to be proud of.)

She isn't an icon of corruption like Berlusconi; she isn't as racist or pro-Putin as Salvini. Mario Draghi is a very impressive man but putting him in charge is not a long-term solution to Italy's problems: if the Italian left doesn't like Meloni they should try winning elections.

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