The first step to an effective response by progressives to the rising tide of rightwing populism in Italy and elsewhere (Editorial, 6 March) is to realise that ever more open borders are the problem. It was predominantly the opposition to inadequately controlled immigration that resulted in the Italian election result, the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election. The other contributing factor was globalisation, with its job-destroying and far-too-open borders to goods such as steel. Lastly, inadequately constrained flows of capital and financial services assisted in the economic crash of 2008. The only counter will be some form of protectionism.
However, Trump’s threatened trade war over steel (Report, 5 March) is the wrong kind of 1930s-style one-sided protectionism. He wants to curb imports that cause domestic unemployment, but at the same time plans to use all possible leverage to open up foreign markets to US exports. To avoid a re-run of the 1930s will require a very different “progressive protectionism”. This could benefit all countries by nurturing and rebuilding local economies through the permanent reduction in the level of international trade in goods, money and services, while enabling nation states to control the level of migration that their citizens desire. This approach can return a sense of optimism to the majority through championing policies geared to achieving more job security, a decrease in inequality and protection of the environment. It is also the only way to see off a further rise of the extreme right.
Colin Hines
East Twickenham, Middlesex
• I agree with Rafael Behr (Opinion, 6 March) that the Italian elections show us that the forces that created Brexit are pan-European. The desperation that makes people vote for populists like Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio is the same desperation that makes people vote for a living fossil like Silvio Berlusconi. In order for “progressives” to prevail, they need to understand rather than condemn the electorate, who fear unemployment and the never-ending flow of asylum seekers through Italy’s southern flank. The opulence that we tourists see in Sorrento, Venice or Rome, is not the experience of many Italians.
Stan Labovitch
Windsor, Berkshire
• Your editorial warns against blaming policy responses by Brussels for the rise of the Italian right. Yet as Larry Elliott says (Backlash grew after decade of damage, 6 March), Italian membership of the euro is clearly a factor in Italian mass unemployment, economic stagnation and the consequent rise of populism, because Rome cannot restore competitiveness by devaluing the lira as it did before 1999. Thank goodness Gordon Brown blocked Tony Blair’s attempts to include Britain in that disastrous political scheme, which was a fetish for British Europhiles in the early 2000s.
Christopher Clayton
Chester, Cheshire
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