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.
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 grew up with her in Rome’s Garbatella district, where they endured the bullying of the Communists who lorded it over the area.
She has proved a doughty culture warrior, defending “family values” and Western civilization against secular modernity. Child to a single mother, she’s opposed abortion on the grounds that her mother did not take that option.
She has also been careful to balance populist policies with mainstream ones, for instance building detention centers in Albania for refugees while increasing the number of Italian work visas.
She boosted the number of daycare centers for working mothers but banned surrogacy, spoke out against same-sex marriage and condemned gender ideology in schools.
Adrian Wooldridge Bloomberg May 14, 2026
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