The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has praised the work undertaken by her British counterpart, Rishi Sunak, to fight people traffickers and clandestine immigration networks, as two of the most prominent rightwing leaders in Europe met in Downing Street.
At the start of a two-day visit designed to deepen relations between the two governments, Meloni was greeted outside Downing Street by a small group of demonstrators carrying placards reading “stand up to racism” and “no to fascist Meloni”.
She said the meeting with Sunak marked “a new beginning” in relations between Italy and Britain.
“I am very happy to be here, and I am convinced that we can do a good job together,” she said. She underlined that she “absolutely agrees” with the work Sunak was doing to counter “the fight against traffickers and clandestine immigration”.
Sunak welcomed Meloni in Italian, saying “thank you Giorgia, and welcome to London”, and he praised her for bringing stability to the Italian economy. The two sides are hoping they can form a deeper alliance straddling defence, Ukraine, migration and trade.
Sunak was due to give Meloni a tour of Westminster Abbey before the coronation of Charles on 6 May. Alongside Poland, Italy represents probably the UK’s best opportunity to influence the direction of the European Union from outside.
Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, has sought to distance herself from her own semi-fascist political roots. This week, as Italy marked the anniversary of its liberation from fascism, she told a ceremony in Rome: “For many years, rightwing political parties in parliament have declared their incompatibility with any nostalgia for fascism.”
But she is dogged by members of her government who stray towards just such nostalgia. Among those taking part in Tuesday’s ceremony was Ignazio La Russa, a collector of fascist memorabilia as well as speaker of the Senate, Italy’s second highest office of state. “There is no reference to anti-fascism in the Italian constitution,” he was quoted as saying.
His comments sparked a barrage of criticism from the centre-left, and calls for him to resign. The Democratic party leader Elly Schlein reacted by insisting that “anti-fascism is our constitution”.
Meloni’s brother-in-law Francesco Lollobrigida said: “We cannot surrender to the idea of ethnic substitution,” which he defined as “Italians are having fewer children, we replace them with someone else”. “That is not the way forward,” he said.
The Italian government is considering how to tackle a long-running decline in the national birthrate. Its natality rate is among the lowest in Europe.
In office since October, Meloni’s governmnet has pledged to curb mass immigration, mainly from north Africa. However, more than 35,085 people have arrived in Italy so far in 2023, interior ministry data shows, up from about 7,900 in the same period last year.
The majority of new arrivals came from Ivory Coast, Guinea, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia and Bangladesh. Meloni has urged the EU to recognise the need for “a single European policy on refugees which provides for support outside the EU borders for those affected by wars and calamities”.
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The meeting comes a day after the UK government’s illegal migration bill cleared the final stages in the House of Commons.
The UK will want to focus on shared defence perspectives and the war in Ukraine, on which Meloni has emerged as a surprisingly staunch supporter of the battle to drive Russian forces from its country.
As Meloni arrived in the UK, leading members of her government were staging a reconstruction conference with senior Ukrainian politicians in Rome. Meloni has herself travelled to Kyiv and is keen to make sure that the G7 heads of government summit in Japan shortly sends out a strong message of solidarity.
Meloni’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, said Italy aimed to reach the defence spending target of 2% of GDP set down by Nato. Italy’s current total is 1.51%.
In a sign of the convergence between the two countries, the UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly; the defence secretary, Ben Wallace; and the trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch, travelled to Rome on 8 and 9 February. Italy and the UK are committed to a multibillion-dollar strategic design of the sixth-generation Tempest military fighter, together with the Japanese.
Italy is currently embroiled in a row over the EU decision to appoint Luigi Di Maio, the former foreign minister and leader of the Five Star Movement, as EU special envoy to the Gulf, a decision that the Italian coalition government said it was not consulted about. The appointment, a critical one as relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran thaw, was made personally by the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell.
