Who is Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s new right wing who is obsessed with Lord of The Rings?
SHE admires Margaret Thatcher, despises woke politics and wants tighter laws around immigration.
Giorgia Meloni, who is set to become Italy’s first female Prime Minister, also wants big tax cuts and breaks for businesses to fire up the country’s economy.
On paper she looks conservative, but some say the 45-year-old will lead Italy’s most right-wing government since Benito Mussolini from 1922 to 1943.
There are questions over her policies at home amid controversial remarks about same-sex parenting, abortion and her refusal to drop her party’s slogan God, Family, Fatherland.
Yet no one could question her meticulousness.
The Lord Of The Rings fan, who once attended a “Hobbit Camp”, is said to be obsessive about details.
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She writes only by hand in capital letters on squares, demands documents are printed on a single page in font size 12 and has a colour-coded wardrobe.
The working-class mum-of-one grew up in the poorer Garbatella area of Rome, set up in the 1920s to give railway and dock workers homes.
She was just 15 when she joined a local branch of the far-right Youth Front, known as the Seagulls.
Pals say she rang the doorbell and was met by a bemused group of all-male radicals.
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One of two daughters, she grew up with her Sicillian mum Anna Paratore after her father, a tax adviser who had voted Communist, abandoned the family when she was 11.
In her book, I am Giorgia: My Roots, My Ideas, she writes about how most of the Seagulls had complicated family lives and wanted to belong to something.
She also revealed she was bullied for being overweight as a teen, which saw her take up running in later life.
As a minister, she shunned the Government chauffeur-driven car and drove her own Mini to Parliament.
She helped found the Brothers of Italy Party (Fratelli d’Italia) in 2012, four years after becoming the country’s youngest minister under then PM Silvio Berlusconi.
Its logo features a tricolour flame, a facist symbol for more than 60 years.
In the run-up to the election Meloni provoked fury over threatening a naval blockade of Libya to stop migrants and is on course for a showdown with the EU over 200billion euros given to help boost Italy’s economy.
The Italian government promised it would use cash from the EU Covid recovery fund to invest in green energy — but Meloni wants to offset soaring energy bills.
BULLIED FOR WEIGHT
There are also worries over support of Ukraine.
She has backed the West, but her Brothers of Italy party will rule with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and Matteo Salvini’s League party.
Both have cast doubt over sanctions against Russia and have close ties with Putin.
It is hoped Meloni can keep them under control, as her party won more votes than either.
Riding the crest of a populist wave, her party has demolished the opposition on a “traditional family values” ticket.
Anti-drugs, anti-fostering for same-sex families and against abortion, Meloni caused uproar at a recent rally.
She told supporters: “Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identify, no to gender ideology.
"No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to working for our people.”
Her pitch to the electorate centered on her down-to-earth approach and honesty.
Yet on election day she tweeted a pic of herself holding two melons in front of her chest.
As Italy headed to the polls on Sunday she said: “I want a country where you get ahead not because of your friends in high places, or the family you were born into, but what you make of yourself.
“The voters like me because they trust me. They know there are no tricks, no lies.”
Meloni will struggle with the same problems facing Britain: Soaring inflation, rising fuel prices and a cost of living crisis.
KEEP FLAME ALIVE
But the Italian economy, the third largest in the Eurozone, also has a mountain of debt at a record 2.7trillion euros.
For decades, its politics have been mired in tax, bribery and sex scandals.
Berlusconi, who led the Government three times, only returned to politics this year after being banned following a conviction for tax fraud.
Meloni has said she admires the Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan style of politics.
She told cheering supporters in Rome last night: “Italians have clearly indicated they want a centre-right government.”
She added: “Italians have chosen us and we will not betray them.”
Yet no one can be certain whether Meloni will keep up the rhetoric when in power.
Matthew Feldman, a specialist in fascism and the far-right and director of Academic Consulting Services, said: “It’s important to recognise that Ms Meloni started her career aged 15 with the Italian Social Movement, a party that wanted to keep the Mussolini flame alive.
“The coalition between these three parties is a very different kettle of fish from anything else we’ve seen in Italy post-war.
“This isn’t just the conservative party with bells on — it’s more than that.
"They talk about law and order, patriotism and immigration, which works for a lot of people.”
He noted how The Brothers of Italy has toned down the anti-EU rhetoric of the past.
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As the election results emerged, Meloni vowed the party would “govern for everyone”.
Who exactly that “everyone” is will soon become clear.
