What is it and how did it originate?
The Five Star movement is an Italian political movement and party. It has been causing issues within Italian government. It was founded on the 4th October 2009 by former comedian Beppe Grillo and is currently being lead by Vito Crimi. The party was started as a protest movement, aiming to appeal to the general discontentment felt by Italian citizens towards both their incompetent political system and the ongoing economic crisis. Their ideas fell on fertile ground and they gathered lots of support very quickly. They advocated for a ‘rescue’ of Italian politics, as said by members Bordignon and Ceccarini in 2013. The party follows populist views, seeking to appeal[1] to the ignored citizens. The party appealed to those struggling after the 2008 Economic Crisis and stepped in as an alternative to the slow response from the Italian Government at the time. They promised quick solutions and to prioritise Italy and Italy’s citizens. The Five Stars in their name represent the five key issues they stand for: public water, sustainable transport, sustainable development, right to Internet access and environmentalism.
The party is anti-immigration and anti-vaccination as well as being wary of the European Union’s power (Eurosceptism) and originally supported Italy’s exit from NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and the Eurozone. The party vows to drastically reduce corporate taxes and guarantee a liveable minimum income, appealing to the voters in Italy’s underdeveloped, often ignored regions. They want to reform Italy’s Parliamentary system to a direct democracy: where people can decide on policies directly rather than relying on representatives. This system is already in place within the party internally, with decisions being made using online voting systems. Finally, the party believes politics should not be a permanent livelihood but instead they enforce a maximum 2 term period for any position held by their representatives and encourage their representatives to return to their previous jobs. This was decided as a reaction to complaints of ‘cronyism’ amongst Italian politics - they aim to combat the issue of nepotism within public offices.
Founder, Beppe Grillo, has often been described as ‘Italy’s Donald Trump’ due to his very right-wing views. These views could be interpreted as incredibly radical and many even compare their ideology to ‘classic fascist ideals’. In fact, in 2017 the Party blocked the passing of a bill that would have banned fascist salutes and penalised the selling of Mussolini memorabilia. The party has drawn criticism for their raucous way of handling politics: journalist Corrado Augis reported of a brawl instigated by a Five Star Movement representative inside Italy’s Parliament building in 2014. In retort, members of the Five Star Movement organised a public burning of Augis’ works - drawing widespread fascist parallels. Not only that but also, Beppe Grillo, the founder of the party, was previously a comedian and people have often drawn comparisons between his previous comedic skits and his current propositions for government. One very notable example is his attitude to vaccinations, in the late 1990s Grillo mocked the idea of compulsory vaccines in his stand up comedy act and now the Five Star Movement affirms that vaccine’s have a correlation to autism, using research that has since been debunked. This had a huge effect on Italy’s general health and in 2017, Italy took up 35% of all measles cases in Europe despite only taking up 8% of the European population.
Unsurprisingly, this party has received widespread criticism both within Italy and throughout the world. They have been described as a fascist, populist party with extreme views yet, within Italy they have received unprecedented support and gained popularity at a startling and frankly shocking rate.
At the start, the Five Star Movement intended to ignore political issues and instead address and combat the social problems facing Italy. Grillo was an avid blogger with a large fanbase and never intended to go into politics. In fact, his first political venture, was the launch of ‘V-Day’ in Bologna on the 14th June 2007. V-day, short for Vaffanculo (translated to ‘go fuck yourself’ in Italian) Day, was a movement against the Italian government at the time and a way to collect signatures to petition for a ‘clean parliament’. A ‘clean parliament’ would prevent criminally convicted politicians from running for office and would also implement a limit on the number of terms a politician could sit for. This ‘clean parliament’ movement proved incredibly successful and he collected 336 000 signatures, a huge leap from the mere 50 000 needed for the petition to be considered.
This initial success was the catalyst for Grillo’s move to more political matters. Following this, on the 8th March 2009, Grillo publicly announced a meeting for the Five Star Civics list where he laid out a 12 point program, otherwise known as the ‘Charter of Florence’, discussing the future of the Five Star Movement and considering endorsements of the upcoming European elections. Unsurprisingly, Grillo endorsed the two electoral candidates who shared views most similar to his own ideology in the 2009 Elections: Luigi de Magistris and Sonia Alfano. These two candidates were also vaguely involved with the movement. Following this, he decided to venture further into politics and on the 9th September 2009, Grillo officially launched the start of the National Five Star Movement, which later on the 4th October 2009 turned into the Five Star Movement (MS5) as we know it today.
The Five Star Movement party first entered candidates in the 2010 Italian regional elections for President. The candidates had varyinh regional success with the most notable success story being Giovanni Favia. Favia won 7% of the vote in his region of Emilia-Romagna. These were significant results for such a young party. Encouraged by these results, the Five Star Movement entered the 2011 local elections where they again achieved varying success. They won more votes in more Northern/Central areas, with their notable hotspots of support being Bologna, Rimini, Piedmont and Ravenna, where they averaged between 9 and 12% of the vote. However, in the more Southern locales they struggled to even win 2% of the vote[2]. After a few more mild successes in regional and local elections in late 2011, they had their first major success when the MS5’s (Five Star Movement’s) candidate was elected the mayor of Sarego, a small Venetian town. This marked the beginning of their rapid climb to power. After the 2012 elections, the party was beginning to gain prominence and support: they were now scoring between 15-20% in opinion polls.
Grillo then announced on the 29th October 2012 that the party would be entering the 2013 general elections. He outlined strict rules within the party for choosing the candidates: they were to be elected by members of the party through an online primary election. Grillo stuck to these guidelines and even expelled 2 prominent party members (one being Giovanni Favia, one of the first MS5 party members to achieve notable success) for breaking the rules. However, this was not the first time Grillo had expressed a dislike for Giovanni Favia; earlier that year Favia had participated in a political talk show, something Grillo had always been against - which is ironic considering Grillo’s comedic past.
Right before the elections, Grillo held a rally inspiring last minute support for the Five Star Movement and a record number of 800 000 Italians showed up. The results of this election (for the Five Star Movement) far surpassed any of the opinion polls. They won 35.22% of the total vote for a seat in the Chamber of Duties, coming in second only to the Democratic Party (the party in power at the time). They also won 33.79% of the total vote for the Senate, again making them the second most voted party, second only to the Democratic Party. This landslide success was only defeated by the Democratic Party forming a coalition: the Italy Common Good Coalition. Yet even with this coalition, MS5 was still the dominating party in many regions such as Abruzzo, Liguria, Sicily, Sardinia, and Marche; and, on the 21st March 2013, MS5 representative Luigi di Maio was elected vice president in the Chamber of Duties, with a majority of votes and making him the youngest to ever hold this position (at only 26 years old).
Further encouraged by all these successes, the Five Star Movement entered their first European Elections in 2014. They won 21.5% of the vote which earned them 17 seats and they actually earned the 2nd most amount of votes of any party (at a national level). They later chose to join the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group in a coalition. The EFD was a fellow Eurosceptic, right-wing political group.
There was no major contention within Italy in the period after 2014 until the 2018 general election. However, the 2018 General Election was incredibly contentious. The 2018 General Election resulted in a hung parliament as no party out of the Five Star Movement, the Centre-Right Coalition (whose main party was the League) and the Centre-Left Coalition won an outright majority. The two central coalitions were groups of political parties in alliance that shared similar views. After 3 tedious months of negotiation between the 3 entities, the Five Star Movement and the League (main party of the Central-Right coalition) formed a joint cabinet that would lead by the independent but previously linked to MS5 politician Giuseppe Conte.
This cabinet was short-lived and on the 20th August 2019, the League withdrew their support of this union. Deputy Prime-Minister Salvini (from the League) announced a motion of no-confidence against Conte and after a harsh debate within the Cabinet, Prime Minister Conte offered up a resignation to Sergio Mattarella, President of the Italian Parliament at the time. Mattarella’s job was to monitor issues and to act as an independent body to help resolve issues. Mattarella stopped Conte from resigning and encouraged to stay and represent the MS5 for another cabinet, this time with the Central-Left coalition.
On the 21st August 2019, a new coalition between The Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party (the main party of the Central-Left coalition) was formed: finding common ground on their environmentalism and fight against economic inequality. This unprecedented pairing was endorsed by leader Beppe Grillo, who deemed it a ‘unique opportunity to reform the country’. Once again they chose Conte to lead this cabinet and he was sworn in on the 5th September 2019. There were multiple internal resignations within the coalition and by 2020 the Five Star Movement had lost a sizeable amount of support throughout the country, in comparison to their popularity in the 2018 elections. This was due to both their slow progress and the multiple parliamentary defections and failures over the last two years.
However, with the Coronavirus outbreak in February 2020, other issues became more urgent. The joint cabinet had to focus on implementing restrictions countrywide and internal politics became less important momentarily.
Then in December 2020, there were clashes within the coalition. Current prime minister (at the time) Giuseppe Conte was disagreeing with Renzi’s (the leader of other coalition party - the Democratic Party) demands for radical economic reforms after the pandemic. Later, on the 13th January 2021, Matteo Renzi announced the resignation of two ministers of the coalition party - causing Conte’s support to plummet and forcing him to call a vote of confidence on the 18th January. Whilst Conte did win the initial vote of no confidence, he struggled with debates and negotiations following and subsequently had to step down as Prime Minister of Italy on the 26th January 2021.
Further inconclusive negotiations within the Parliament led to Sergio Mattarella, the President of the Italian Parliament, granting Roberto Fico, the President of the Chamber, the task of verifying the possibility of a new government composed of the same majority as the previous one (a coalition between MS5 and the central left coalition). Fico was unable to verify this possibility and so Mattarella was forced to look for alternatives. He invited Mario Draghi, former President of the European Central Bank, and offered him the option to form a technocratic government, a government formed by a non-political body and instead formed by experts in their field, to run the country. Draghi accepted this offer on the 3rd February 2021 and was immediately endorsed by Giuseppe Conte, former prime minister. On February 10th, both Sergio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini publicly endorsed Draghi. And then on February 11th, both the Democratic Party and the MS5 voted in favour of Draghi forming a technocratic government and new cabinet.
Then on the 12th February 2021, Draghi met with President Mattarella who approved Draghi’s list of ministers for the Cabinet and on the 13th February 2021, Mario Draghi was sworn into office to form Italy’s 67th Cabinet.