Why the Italian left looks doomed in this weekend’s elections | James Newell

Internally divided and cut off from the working class, the left is struggling in Italy for the same reasons as elsewhere in Europe

The prospects for the left in the upcoming Italian general election do not look good, divided as it is between the mainstream Democratic party (PD) and a variety of radical left groupings, many of which have come under the umbrella of Liberi e Uguali (Free and Equal), headed by senate president Pietro Grasso. The last opinion poll put the PD on 22.7% and Free and Equal on 5.4%. The electoral system, which distributes over a third of the seats according to first-past-the-post, will almost certainly ensure that the left pays dearly for its divisions.

From one point of view, the unpopularity of the PD – which has been the mainstay of the governing coalition and which reached a high of 41% in the 2014 European election – is puzzling. The Italian economy is picking up. The government has received praise from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and in other quarters for a series of structural reforms deemed essential to raising productivity and investment. The prime minister, the PD’s Paolo Gentiloni, is the most popular of the major parties’ spokespersons.

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