Giorgia Meloni
Giorgia Meloni has turned insulting the US president into an art form and condemned Benjamin Netanyahu’s bellicose Israeli policies. Meloni has built bridges to Europe’s establishment, forging a good relationship with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and vigorously supporting Ukraine. Meloni's pragmatism offers a blueprint to both left and right at a time of political rupture, and has made her the European Union’s master of populist triangulation. During her three years in power, France has gone through five prime ministers and Britain three (and counting). Germany has had two chancellors. The politician she most resembles is from the opposite wing: Labour’s Angela Rayner, a potential replacement for the wounded Starmer. Like Rayner, Meloni is a working-class single mother who did not go to university. Like Rayner, she has preserved her regional accent even as she has climbed the political ladder. She has a core group of loyal right-wing friends, many of whom gre...
