the fall of Draghi and Johnson after the NATO summit

The afternoon of June 30, Mario Draghi I was taking a phone call from the Prado Museum. Sitting on a bench and away from the rest of the international leaders attending the Madrid summit, the Italian Prime Minister received the news that his coalition government imploded. Yesterday, 22 days after that moment, Draghi resigned from his post, turning the Prado scene into a premonition of abandonment to which his cabinet has subjected him.

Something similar has happened to Boris Johnson, who was photographed walking alone through the Prado halls and who today he is no longer prime minister of the United Kingdom after his own party forced him to resign on July 7.

Saving the distances, the fall of the two leaders has happened in a similar way. They both photographed alone in the museum and both have abandoned theirs. Both have resigned, but both have also fought to stay in power, albeit in very different ways.

[Fotogalería: así ha sido la cena en el Museo del Prado con los líderes de la cumbre de la OTAN]

While Johnson clung to the job until a wave of resignations made the situation untenable, Draghi has left his future in the hands of his partners. These have preferred to go to early elections rather than continue supporting the one who is considered the savior of the euro.

Draghi’s slow resignation

“Thank you, even the bankers have a heart. Thank you for this and for what we have done together,” the Italian prime minister acknowledged on Thursday before a Chamber of Deputies standing to bid him farewell before going before the head of state, Sergio Mattarella, to formalize his resignation.

Previously, Draghi tried to recompose his coalition, but could not; he ended up being abandoned by three of his main associates: Giuseppe Conte, leader of the 5 Star Movement (M5E); the far right Matteo Salvini of the League and the veteran Silvio Berlusconi from Forza Italia.

Thus ends the third Government of a legislature that will end in Marchafter the previous two of the M5E, first with Salvini and then with the progressive Democratic Party (PD), both chaired by Giuseppe Conte.

[Draghi asoma a Italia al precipicio de las elecciones con la ultraderecha liderando las encuestas]

One bureaucrat to unite them all

Draghi (Rome, 1947) was called to govern by the head of state, Sergio Mattarella, after the fall of Conte in February 2021, at a critical moment, when the Pandemic Recovery Plan to obtain the millionaire European funds.

The economist, one of the most praised Italians both inside and outside the country, was the only one capable of obtaining a broad consensus to this end, supported by a coalition made up of all the parties, from left to right, except for the ultra Giorgia Meloni.

“There is nothing to think that this government can do anything without the convinced support of Parliament, a support that is not based on political alchemy but on the spirit of sacrifice of men and women who face the last year of the legislature with a vibrant desire to be reborn, to be stronger”, he proclaimed at his investiture.

Italy was proud of this “unity” and once again made use of a technician: the government of Mario Draghi was born, the secretive economist who saved the single currency at the worst moment presiding over the European Central Bank (ECB).

The coalition government

The new prime minister inaugurated a new way of exercising power: discreet, somewhat taciturn, without social networks and few but clear words, such as when a month after arriving at the Chigi Palace he called the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a “dictator”.

When it came to distributing ministries, he did so in a scrupulously proportional way to the parliamentary weight of the parties and reserved the economic portfolios to technicals, like the Economy one, to Daniele Franco, director of the Italian Central Bank.

The Italian Prime Minister reserved economic portfolios for technicians

The technicians, like him, landed in Rome and took charge, some arrived from the business world, such as Vittorio Colao, who left Vodafone to head the Ministry of Innovation, or Roberto Cingolani, from the aerospace company Leonardo and at the head of the first Ministry for the Ecological Transition of the country’s history.

The first months the gear worked: The pandemic, which had hit Italy point-blank, was already coming to an end and vaccination was going from strength to strength under the baton of an army general.

Also, the Italian economy rebounded after the strains of the virus and in July 2021 Brussels endorsed the Italian Recovery Plan, releasing a treasure of 191,000 million European euros.

However, not everything was sewing and singing and they arose scuffles in his coalitionbut nothing alarming in the case of such a heterogeneous group: from the progressive PD to the populist M5E to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Salvini’s League.

The first relevant discrepancies emerged in December 2021when Parliament had to elect a head of state and the process turned into a pitched battle.

Draghi was undoubtedly the favorite to occupy the main position in the State but that left the Government in a vacant seat and no one else could muster his consensus. The solution? Consider it impossible and force Mattarella to repeat reluctantly in office.

the ukrainian war

But the turning point came with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Draghi unequivocally condemned, even to travel to kyiv together with the leaders of France and Germany to bless the candidacy of those attacked to enter the EU.

The economist had to weather the crisis and historic inflation, and also to end dependence on gas, but the lack of support from the M5E to arm the Ukrainian resistance opened a crack that was doomed to widen.

The support of the party”anticaste” he began to waver, disagreements grew and on July 14 he refused to vote on a decree hidden behind a confidence vote.

And Draghi, who wanted to govern with everyone, or at least with a large majority, decided to resign. Mattarella gave him six days to reconsider but on the seventh, today, he consummated his intention.

East “grandfather in the service of the state“, as he liked to call himself with a certain sarcasm, was gobbled up by the voracious Roman politics, little prone to concord.