Good news for New Labour from Italy. Tony Blair’s second favourite holiday host Silvio Berlusconi has been re-elected as prime minister. You’d think Italians would be bored with elections but according to the Ministry of the Interior just over 80% of eligible voters went to the polls and 46.8%, or 17,063,874 of them voted for Berlusconi’s hard right coalition giving him 340 seats in the lower house.
The results were not good for the left, in particular for the far left. Walter Veltroni’s Partito Democratico in coalition with an outfit called Italia dei valori (Italy of values – whatever that means) scored 37.5% and got 239 seats. Fausto Bertinotti’s La Sinistra L’arcobaleno (Rainbow left- what a crap name) got just over one million votes and 3% of the vote.
For readers of this site Sinistra Critica’s 167 673 votes (0.46%) can either be interpreted in a lot of votes for class struggle, not bad for a new formation on its first electoral outing or a bit of a setback. What follows is a loose translation of an article from their website with a couple of interjections from me. If there is enough interest I’ll flesh it out a bit later.
If you want more detail on Sinistra Critica’s split from Rifondazione have a look at this piece from International Viewpoint.
Flavia D’angeli of Sinistra Critica says that Bertinotti has thrown away fifteen years of the combative left’s history and that responsibility this defeat can be put at the feet of L’arcobaleno’s leadership. She argues that what was beaten in this election was the centre left’s idea in recent years that Berlusconi could be beaten with moderate politics and by trying to assemble a coalition of forces that could not be brought together.
Looking on the bright side Flavia says that the only thing to be done is to re-build. Tell me about it!
Sinistra Critica’s small but precious vote is giving us the push to get on with this enormous job. The far left could have crossed the 1% threshold and won both strength and credibility if the Partito comunista dei lavatori hadn’t conducted its introspective campaign. Does that remind you of anything?
The rebuilding will have to be based on the movements and the social opposition. Sinistra Critica is ready to help rebuild an opposition movement to the the neo-liberal politics which rely on insecurity of jobs and working conditions, war, environmental devastation and Vatican interference.
On the political level we are once again proposing an anti-capitalist constituent assembly which will have nothing in common with identity based and symbolic nostalgia. Hmmm. Sounds like someone has bad memories of something. She insists that no generic appeal for “Communist unity” can resolve the dreadful state in which the left finds itself.
It’s going to take a lot of hard work for a long time but we are ready to do it.
Liam redux 
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