A hard rain falls

The world is very clearly in transition. Change and decay is all around us, often accompanied by violence, threatened revolution, and sweeping political change.

In recent days, we have witnessed several manifestations of this transformation. Turning away from a stable and internationally regarded former central banker as prime minister, the Italians have chosen a far-right woman, a move that apparently keeps European Commission leaders awake at night.

Iran’s mullahs who overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the great Islamic revolution of 1979 are now turning their guns on their own young people.  Just weeks into the job, British Prime Minister Liz Truss faced ridicule and dissent at her own Conservative party conference.  Gulf leaders have ignored Western pleas to stop cosying up to the war criminal in the Kremlin.

President Vladimir Putin remains the main threat to world stability, as he orders nuclear weapons to be moved to the Ukrainian border. Nor should we forget it is only a few weeks since China’s Xi Jinping carried out a vast air force military exercise, including live bombing raids, around Taiwan, describing them as a simulated invasion of the island.

When Mario Draghi resigned as prime minister of Italy in July, I noted here that it was a bad day for Europe’s fifth-largest economy. Lacking Draghi’s steady hand, common sense, and support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, I predicted instability and a return to nationalism. That has turned out to be the case.

Giorgia Meloni, a former journalist and leader of the extreme right Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party, is set to be installed as Italy’s first female prime minister. She has adopted the slogan of former dictator Benito Mussolini: “God, homeland, family.” While she denies fascist leanings, we need no reminder that Il Duce was prominent in Europe before becoming an ally of Adolf Hitler.

Meloni identifies herself with the gang that label themselves the enemies of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, former currency trader, and champion of democracy. Meloni believes the 92-year-old Soros to be part of a grand conspiracy – the so called “great replacement theory” – whereby a closet group of the financial elite supplant Europe’s Christian culture by promoting mass immigration, creating a mindless consumer society inhabited by “slaves” who have no loyalty to class or gender. Certainly, Meloni has warned against mass slavery in early speeches.

But Meloni has been careful to insist that she will govern for all Italians. EU officials are not so sure. They worry that her coalition partners, including Matteo Salvini, veteran head of the hard right Lega and Forza Italia’s Silvio Berlusconi, have strong links to Putin, though Meloni professes to support Ukraine.

Another worry is her close friendship with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who has little inhibition in defying EU laws. Italy has an economy in deep trouble, and inflation is rising. If Meloni is to tackle some of her country’s endemic problems, she will need the support of Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission’s energetic president, as well as to satisfy the demands of Europe’s capital markets.

Floating a very different conspiracy theory this week was the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who broke his silence on the strong uprising following the death of a woman in police custody, saying it had been engineered by Iran’s arch-enemies and their allies the United States and Israel. The riots have been the biggest challenge to Khamenei’s autocratic rule for a decade, and security forces have been warned there is more to come.

Schoolgirls across the country have joined the protests, now in their third week, refusing to cover their faces. These young people, some shouting “Death to the Dictator,” are taking extraordinary risks in the face of a brutal police force. International media has shown shocking scenes of brutality in Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz, with children running for their lives, chased by armed police on motorcycles. It surely is time for more sanctions against this repulsive regime.

There were elements of Shakespearian drama at Liz Truss’s first Conservative party conference. But perhaps even the Bard could scarcely have scripted the anger, bitterness, pathos, deceit, and satire we witnessed in Birmingham this week.

As the New Statesman saw it, a mood of despair pervaded the proceedings. The conference was doomed before it started. About half of the country’s 357 Tory MPs stayed away, some ostensibly to spend time with their constituents, others deciding the cost of attending was too high. It has been a conference like no other, with a deeply divided party following a no-holds-barred leadership campaign between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

The grand morale-raising rallies of former years were nowhere to be seen. Unlike Labour’s conference in Blackpool a week earlier, there were no serious debates, formal proposals, and amendments, or votes – just carefully stage-managed addresses.

It followed hard on the heels of the not-so-mini budget launched by Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, which proposed the biggest tax cuts in a generation at a cost of £45 billion, to be paid for by government borrowing.

The reaction was immediate and deafening.  How could the richest in society benefit by thousands of pounds while the millions who struggle to live on a basic wage were getting almost nothing? The abolition of the top 45 percent tax band and ditching of a planned rise in corporation tax generated most concern.  Other measures strongly opposed were the freeing of restrictions on bankers’ bonuses and removing value added tax on goods sold to overseas visitors.

As anger mounted nationally and within the Tory party, last weekend Truss stoically stood by the package, insisting every part of it was essential to restore growth to Britain’s stagnant economy. But by Sunday night, the financial markets were in turmoil, and the value of the pound plunged, almost reaching parity with the United States dollar. Early Monday morning, Kwarteng told Truss he was backing down on cutting the top rate of tax, and he came to the conference late on Monday to seek to justify the rest of his budget. But the die was cast.

There are almost certainly more U-turns ahead. On Tuesday, with the pensions industry in panic, the Bank of England stepped into the market, buying government bonds to calm the turmoil. But mortgage lenders have continued to withdraw products and cancel offers to borrowers, and mortgage holders struggling to cope with rates of interest similar to those in 2008 when the global financial crisis hit.

It was a baptism of fire for the prime minister, with repeated calls for her imminent resignation. The trouble is there is no one to replace her, and the Tories could scarcely survive yet another dumped leader.

Truss’s composed and stoic nature enabled her to face up to bruising media interrogation and humiliation from Tory grandees, including from former chancellor Norman Lamont who repeated the old cliché: “she is in office but not in power.” But in her final speech to the conference on Wednesday, Truss turned to Shakespeare, promising to weather The Tempest. The Conservatives liked that and, as Tories always do, gave her a standing ovation.

The worse news this week is that Gulf Arabs have rejected the West’s request not to cut oil production. The consequent rise in wholesale oil prices means they will be shoring up Putin’s coffers. Can Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates still be regarded as friends of the West?

This article was published by the Australian Institute for International Affairs.