09.04.2026

An unexpected result

Following its referendum defeat, the far-right government is mired in corruption and clearly in trouble. However, writes Toby Abse, the ‘centre-left’ is a complete shambles and offers nothing substantially different

As readers will know, prime minister Giorgia Meloni suffered a very decisive defeat in the constitutional referendum of March 22-23 on judicial reform.

Although the opinion polls had shown that the initially huge gap between the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ voters had narrowed over the last month of the referendum campaign, no opinion pollster had predicted a clear victory for the ‘no’ camp. The pollsters had merely suggested that the government’s initial overwhelming lead had evaporated, and the contest had become too close to call.

Meloni had imagined that the high turnout would work in her favour, that on this occasion opposition supporters were eager for a fight, but that her own supporters needed to be mobilised, as the apparently technical question on the ballot paper about various alterations to specific clauses in the Italian constitution of 1948 would not generate vast interest amongst her followers, even if they managed to follow the brief explanations offered by TV news programmes or the more serious newspapers.

Therefore she abandoned her original strategy of leaving the campaigning to others and made an increasing number of personal interventions on TV and social media - interventions which took on an ever more demagogic form, making constant references to alleged miscarriages of justice, and suggesting that reforming the structure of the judiciary would somehow guarantee that no mistakes would be made in individual cases ever again. One of her last interventions, at a public rally, even culminated in a claim that a ‘no’ victory would allow the magistrates to release “illegal immigrants, rapists and paedophiles” - in short, reverting to her default position of appealing to a combination of racism and widespread fear of crime.

In the event, voters did turn out in much greater numbers than most people had predicted - the percentage of habitual abstainers in recent general, European, municipal and regional elections had created an expectation of widespread apathy and lack of interest in both individual parties and wider political issues. However, the 58.9% turnout did not work in Meloni’s favour. 53.7% voted ‘no’, against the 46.3% who voted ‘yes’ - a two-million majority for her opponents over her supporters. This defeat cannot be minimised - the ‘yes’ vote only gained a majority in three regions out of 20, in contrast to the ‘patchwork quilt’ effect that has occurred in most general elections.¹ While voters supporting Meloni’s far-right Fratelli d’Italia (‘Brothers of Italy’) showed the greatest loyalty amongst the rightwing forces, with 88.8% voting ‘yes’, there is no way that the outcome can be seen as reinforcing the FdI.

Turnout

The highest turnouts were in the ‘red regions’ of Emilia Romagna (66.67%) and Tuscany (66.26%), where the Communist Party had originally been dominant. These regions predictably gave the ‘no’ side votes that exceeded the national average - 57.2% in Emilia-Romagna and 58.1% in Tuscany. But this opposition triumph in the ‘red regions’ was not counter-balanced by votes in the southern regions, which all had lower turnouts, and those people who bothered to go to the polling stations did not rally to Meloni.

Some commentators see the higher abstention rate as an indication of voters’ disillusionment with the government. Meloni’s endorsement of the desire to introduce ‘differential autonomy’ - a form of devolution that would favour the northern regions at the expense of the south - has not helped her.² Whilst the organised crime groups (the Sicilian Mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra and the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta) generally mobilise their support base in favour of rightwing parties in local, regional and general elections, they seem to have shown no such enthusiasm for involving themselves in a referendum against the magistrates.

Campania may have only had a 50.8% turnout, but it produced a 65.2% ‘no’ vote (higher than that of the ‘red regions’), while Naples, Campania’s regional capital, had a colossal 75.5% ‘no’ vote, albeit on a 49.55% turnout. Whilst the other two regions usually associated with organised crime - Calabria and Sicily - had even lower turnouts, they also had high ‘no’ votes - 57.3% in Calabria and 61% in Sicily. Clearly a section of civil society (which did not necessarily have any links with the organised left or trade unions) wanted to show ‘solidarity’ with the magistrates - out of hostility to the Camorra, Mafia and ’Ndrangheta.

The clear ‘yes’ majority amongst the older working population was counter-balanced by a 55% ‘no’ vote amongst those over 55 - pensioners were obviously aware that Meloni’s government, far from reversing the pension ‘reform’ associated with Elsa Fornero and Mario Monti, had made their financial situation even worse, and her run-down of the SSN (Italy’s national health service) had had a particular effect on this group.

The strong ‘no’ vote amongst the young shows that mobilisations over issues such as Gaza and the climate emergency have generated a greater degree of general political commitment, even if this is not, understandably, accompanied by any great enthusiasm for the mainstream political parties. Interestingly, Meloni’s security decrees of 2025 and 2026, which created new criminal offences and harsher penalties for existing ones, and were particularly aimed at protestors over Palestine and the environment, had not turned youth against the magistrates as such, even though young people had frequently been the main victims of judicial action against those involved in picketing, road blocks and ‘eco-vandalism’. Some of these had been more eager to participate in politics earlier in their lives, but had lost interest, as the centre-left Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) had drifted further to the right under prime minister Matteo Renzi’s virulently anti-trade union premiership (2014‑16).

Spring-cleaning

The referendum result clearly rattled Meloni, who has rather desperately sought to purge her government of those whose conduct made her claims to be improving Italy’s justice system look absurd. The first casualties of Meloni’s ‘spring-cleaning’³ were, predictably, figures inside the ministry of justice. FdI member Andrea Delmastro, the under-secretary of the justice ministry, had been completely discredited in the final days of the referendum campaign, as newspaper stories drew attention to his involvement in the ownership of a restaurant run by a company whose leading figure was the daughter of Mauro Caroccia, a man already convicted of money laundering on behalf of the notorious Senese clan, Camorristi, which is involved in large-scale drug trafficking.

Delmastro had tried to claim that he was completely unaware of who Miriam Caroccia’s father was when the company was set up, and that he got rid of his shares as soon as he found out. The absurdity of all this became obvious with the publication of photographs of Delmastro in the restaurant alongside the man in question. Moreover, there was also photographic evidence of a large gathering of leading civil servants in charge of prison wardens - a section of the justice ministry for which Delmastro had particular responsibility - at the same restaurant, while justice ministry chief of staff Giusi Bartolazzi was photographed there on another occasion.

Bartolazzi had already made herself vulnerable by ranting in the closing days of the referendum campaign about the magistrates being “an execution squad” and about the need to get them out of the way. It is, of course, no coincidence that Bartolazzi, an ex-magistrate herself, was already under investigation for allegedly lying about her role in the ‘Almasri affair’ - when the Italian government not only freed Osama Almasri (a Libyan wanted by the International Criminal Court for torturing migrant prisoners and crimes against children), but put him on an Italian government plane, so that he could return to Libya in triumph.⁴ Meloni forced Bartolazzi to resign.

The other main victim of Meloni’s attempt to clean up her government was the FdI’s Daniela Santanchè, who until the referendum had managed to remain tourism minister, despite a string of judicial investigations into her business affairs over allegations of fraud. Unlike Delmastro and Bartolazzi, who resigned quite promptly, Santanchè - generally known as the ‘Pythoness’ - took nearly 24 hours to respond to Meloni’s public request that she should resign, and drafted a particularly poisonous resignation letter with the help of her friend, Ignazio Benito La Russa - the FdI co-founder and president of the Senate.

In the wake of the referendum defeat, there has also been a purge of leading parliamentarians of the centre-right Forza Italia by an irate Marina Berlusconi (daughter of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi), who seems to blame Forza Italia foreign minister Antonio Tajani and his close associates for the referendum defeat.

Amusing as the internal squabbles involving both FdI and Forza Italia members may be, the political parties associated with the ‘no’ victory have not behaved with much dignity either. No sooner had the results started to come in than Giuseppe Conte, the leader of the green populist M5S (Five Star Movement) and former prime minister, felt it was necessary to raise the question of a primary contest to find out who should lead the ‘centre left’ at the next election.

The purpose of this is to undermine Elly Schlein, who, as leader of the Democratic Party for the last three years, is the natural prime ministerial candidate for her side. Whilst Conte, having ruthlessly toppled M5S co-founder Beppe Grillo and tightened up the internal organisation of M5S, is in no danger of being challenged within his organisation, Schlein has no such security. The PD’s right wing - never reconciled to her victory in the February 2023 PD primary - are quite likely either to put up a rival candidate against Schlein themselves, or to back any ‘independent’ centrist willing to stand against her in a coalition primary.

PD right

As things stand, in any first-past-the-post primary involving three or four candidates, Conte would win, although in a hypothetical two-round contest Schlein might perhaps have more of a chance. The point here is that the PD right is more concerned with undermining Schlein than achieving a general election victory for either the PD or the ‘centre-left’ coalition as a whole. While we may regard Schlein as a relatively mild social democrat, for the PD right she represents the ‘radical left’.⁵

As for the right, until her referendum defeat Meloni believed that her government would be the longest-lasting one in the history of the Italian Republic⁶ and that she would have no difficulty in being re-elected at the next general election, scheduled for 2027 (and stood a good chance of eventually becoming president of the republic). The referendum outcome and the growing unpopularity in Italy of her friend, Donald Trump, as well as the disastrous effect his current war against Iran is having on Italy’s weak economy, place all this in doubt.

1. The September 2022 general election, which brought Meloni into office, was an exception to this general rule, because the rightwing bloc - FdI, Lega and Forza Italia - were united, whilst their opponents were split three ways.↩︎

2. While the constitutional court ruled that the original proposal for ‘differential autonomy’ was unconstitutional, the Lega-run regions in the north have resorted to various subterfuges in a bid to give themselves greater power and a greater share of the national revenue.↩︎

3. Which the Italians call ‘pulizia di Pasqua’ (Easter cleaning).↩︎

4. Needless to say, justice minister Nordio, interior minister Piantedosi and Meloni’s undersecretary have been shielded from any criminal investigation, although it is clear that Bartolazzi was not acting on her own initiative.↩︎

5. She opposed the PD right’s endorsement of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and, although she has tactfully avoided using the word ‘genocide’, she is an outspoken opponent of Netanyahu and the current Israeli government. Schlein is the daughter of an American Jew who spent a few years in Israel in his youth, but became disillusioned with Zionism and settled in Switzerland to pursue an academic career. It may also be noted that Schlein herself has experienced real anti-Semitism, including one particularly tasteless cartoon in Il Fatto Quotidiano soon after her election as leader. Doubtless there is worse material floating around the internet, and I suspect this is a factor in her relatively low scores in opinion polls about the relative merits of Italian Party leaders.↩︎

6. Only Berlusconi has the longest continuous record as prime minister, and before the referendum she looked set to surpass him in September 2026.↩︎