13 February 2018

The Local: Is Italy's Five Star Movement still an 'anti-establishment' party?

There are other reasons for voter dissatisfaction with the status quo, from a stagnant economy to mafia infiltration in politics, to a younger generation left disproportionately affected by unemployment and unstable work, after successive governments courted the elderly. The M5S started out with one message to voters: this is not the only option. [...]

Part of the M5S's ideology is that politics should not be a career, so it imposes a two-term limit on its own representatives, after which they are expected to return to work in civil society. While the main parties are often accused of cronyism, the M5S excludes those who already hold public office from their list. [...]

Grillo was fiercely eurosceptic and had long supported a referendum on euro membership, something which rattled markets and Italian business-owners. But in the months leading up to the 2018 election this was downgraded to a "plan B" and Grillo's replacement Di Maio has been more positive about the EU in general, recently saying he "would not contemplate" a referendum on the euro even as a last resort. [...]

For now, it is clinging on to its anti-establishment label through a combination of vagueness around its policies and the fact it has not yet made it into government, but if this changes after March, it would likely lose this label once and for all.

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