Italy’s Prime Minister Broke Up With Her Boyfriend. It’s Actually Quite a Big Deal.

 

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

Italy’s Prime Minister Broke Up With Her Boyfriend. It’s Actually Quite a Big Deal.

Nov. 1, 2023, 1:00 a.m. ET

 

By Mattia Ferraresi

Mr. Ferraresi, a journalist who writes widely on Italy’s politics and society, wrote from Rome.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/opinion/meloni-breakup-italy.html

 

Giorgia Meloni broke the glass ceiling again. After becoming the first woman and the first post-fascist leader to be prime minister of Italy, she recently became the first head of government to announce on social media that she had dumped her boyfriend.

 

“My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted nearly 10 years, ends here,” she wrote in October on X, formerly known as Twitter, informing the country that the couple had been drifting apart and it was time to call it a day. “I have nothing more to say on this,” she concluded.

 

But that wasn’t really true. She did have more to say.

 

In a postscript to that message, she addressed “those who hoped to weaken me by striking me in my private life.” “No matter how much a water drop may hope to carve the stone, the stone remains stone and the drop is only water,” she wrote, somewhat cryptically. The strange addendum made clear that behind the personal announcement was a political battle. For days, it was all the papers and news shows could talk about.

 

Perhaps it’s hard, from afar, to see what all the fuss is about. The ending of Ms. Meloni’s relationship may seem like a trivial — or at least personal — concern. Yet the whole drama, from the circumstances of the boyfriend’s fall from grace to the breakup itself, offers a window onto the nature of power in Italy, where politics, media and business interests are toxically entwined. It says a lot about how the country is run.

 

Mr. Giambruno and Ms. Meloni met nearly a decade ago in TV studios. She was the ambitious leader of a small far-right party constantly looking for visibility; he was a youngish anchorman on the rise. It seemed a perfect match. The two were open about their political differences on issues like cannabis legalization and same-sex marriage, and despite Ms. Meloni’s enthusiasm for the traditional family, they never married. In 2016 they had a daughter. It was a relationship made and lived in the media limelight. It would end that way, too.

 

In mid-October, damning off-air videos and audio recordings emerged of Mr. Giambruno. In the videos, he could be heard making inappropriate remarks and awkwardly flirting with a co-worker. (“Why didn’t we meet before?” he complained to her.) In the audio recordings, things went even further. Among many lewd comments, he invited female colleagues to join his team, where they would do “threesomes” and “foursomes.” Days after the recordings became public, Ms. Meloni announced their relationship was over.

 

The network where Mr. Giambruno works — he was suspended from his show last week but remains on staff — is the Mediaset group, the biggest private broadcaster in Italy. His fall was an inside job: Someone recorded the compromising scenes and leaked them to the popular satirical program “Striscia la Notizia,” also broadcast by Mediaset. The company is owned by the Berlusconi family.

 

When Ms. Meloni took office in October last year, Mr. Giambruno stepped down as anchor of a news program to avoid potential conflicts of interest and went to work behind the scenes on a different show. But it wasn’t long before Mediaset was encouraging him to take a more prominent role. In July he began hosting a daily show on current affairs, inevitably finding himself in the awkward position of commenting on a government led by his partner.

 

Ms. Meloni, who has always prided herself on being an independent, self-made politician who could not be blackmailed, was suddenly exposed to proxy political attacks as people criticized her partner. Mr. Giambruno didn’t make it difficult: Under heavy scrutiny, he made some serious missteps — like suggesting women should avoid getting drunk if they wanted to avoid sexual predators — and forced Ms. Meloni to publicly clarify that he did not speak on her behalf.

 

The leaked recordings, deeply embarrassing for the prime minister, were the last straw. Ms. Meloni reportedly read the whole operation as a conspiracy against her. Who was behind it? Marina Berlusconi — a 57-year-old businesswoman and the oldest child of Silvio Berlusconi, the four-time prime minister who died in June — was the obvious culprit. Though she does not have a role in Mediaset (the company is run by her brother Pier Silvio), Ms. Berlusconi is the chair of the company’s parent, Fininvest.

 

Ms. Berlusconi maintains that she has no intention of running for office, but that doesn’t mean she’s not interested in influencing politics. The family has a leading role in Forza Italia, a conservative party founded by Mr. Berlusconi that plays a small yet decisive role in the government coalition. (It helps that the children agreed to cover the party’s debt, worth $95 million, previously guaranteed by Mr. Berlusconi.) At the same time, the family, at the head of an estimated $6.8 billion empire, wants to make sure the government doesn’t interfere with its business interests.

 

In September, for example, Ms. Berlusconi sharply criticized the government’s proposed windfall tax on banks that would target the extra profits made from higher interest rates. The measure, a brainchild of Ms. Meloni, would have eaten into the earnings of Banca Mediolanum, which is partly controlled by the Berlusconi family and is central to its empire. Following Ms. Berlusconi’s lead, Forza Italia successfully worked to water down the bill.

 

Forza Italia has been an unhappy member of the government from the start, resentful of its junior status in a three-party right-wing coalition. Behind the appearance of harmony, it has clashed with Ms. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party on several issues, including support for Ukraine, fiscal policy, inheritance tax and reform of the justice system. The Giambruno episode — apparently pitting Forza Italia against the prime minister — has further complicated relations and may even weaken a government that, under increased pressure from financial markets and regulatory institutions, is struggling to pass a budget.

 

Was Ms. Meloni the target of an elaborate plot to undermine her government? It’s tempting to overstate the scheming abilities of the people involved. (Ms. Berlusconi, for her part, strenuously denied speculation about her role in the controversy.) Italy is the country not only of Machiavelli but also of bunga bunga parties, and it’s not always easy to separate political cunning from sloppiness. Either way, the episode lays bare the conflicts of interests that define Italian public life.

 

This inscrutable game, in which the personal and the political continually overlap, defies logic — an endless maze where you keep meeting the same people wearing different hats. More than half a century ago, an aphorism commonly attributed to the journalist Leo Longanesi captured the problem: “The revolution will never take place in Italy, because we all know each other.” The same is seemingly true for functional government.

 

Mattia Ferraresi (@mattiaferraresi) is the managing editor of the Italian newspaper Domani.