We left Giorgia Meloni reading.

She was dressed in white, papers in her hand. Giuseppe Conte had called Italy’s parliamentary COVID commission a firing squad. Meloni answered that the commission was not a trial of one person. What mattered was finding the truth and establishing responsibility—

ovunque esse siano.

Wherever it lies.

There may be something new to report by mid-September.

Until then, this is what happened before.

Giorgia Meloni was born in Rome in 1977 and grew up principally in Garbatella, south of the historic center. Her father left when she was young. She and her sister were raised largely by their mother.

She did not go to university.

At fifteen, she joined the youth organization of the Italian Social Movement.

That was 1992.

Italy was moving.

The old party system was beginning to come apart under the corruption investigations that became known as Mani Pulite. Christian Democracy, which had dominated Italian government for decades, would disappear. The Socialist Party would collapse. Silvio Berlusconi would enter politics. Parties that had spent years outside government would find openings that had not existed before.

The MSI was one of them.

It carried the inheritance of Italy’s post-fascist right. It would not remain the party Meloni had joined.

In the 1990s it became Alleanza Nazionale, seeking a broader place inside the Italian right. Meloni moved through its youth organization and into elected politics.

At twenty-one, she was elected to the Province of Rome.

She kept going.

In 2006, at twenty-nine, she entered the Chamber of Deputies.

Two years later Berlusconi made her Minister for Youth. She was thirty-one, the youngest minister in the history of the Italian Republic.

The political structure around her kept moving.

The center-right consolidated. Parties joined together. Alliances changed. Alleanza Nazionale merged into Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà.

Meloni went with it.

Then she left.

In 2012, with two other politicians from the center-right, she helped found Fratelli d’Italia.

It was small.

In its first national election, in 2013, the party received about two percent of the vote.

Meloni stayed.

Five years later, Fratelli d’Italia received a little over four percent.

She stayed.

Then came another rearrangement.

When Mario Draghi formed a broad national-unity government in 2021, Fratelli d’Italia remained outside it. Meloni became the principal leader of parliamentary opposition while much of the rest of Italian politics shared responsibility for governing.

In the 2022 election, Fratelli d’Italia received about twenty-six percent of the vote.

The party that had received roughly two percent nine years earlier was now the largest in Italy.

Meloni became prime minister.

She was forty-five.

There are several ways to explain that sequence.

She may have been unusually adaptable. She may have been unusually disciplined. Circumstances may repeatedly have created openings. Remaining outside the Draghi government may have helped when voters became dissatisfied with the parties supporting it.

Some of those explanations may eventually matter.

For now, the sequence is enough.

She entered politics at fifteen.

The party she entered changed.

She continued.

The structure around her changed again.

She continued.

She entered government.

That political arrangement changed.

She helped create another party.

It remained small.

She continued.

It grew.

She became prime minister.

That is the background to the woman we saw last time with the papers in her hand.

She did not arrive at Palazzo Chigi from business, academia, law or some other profession. Politics has been her working environment since adolescence. By the time she became prime minister, she had spent approximately thirty years inside changing parties, coalitions, governments and oppositions.

Now she is in government herself.

The COVID commission is still working. Conte is expected back before it in mid-September. There will be questions and further clarification. There may be new evidence. There may not.

We already know where we left Meloni.

Reading.

Until something else happens, this is what happened before.

WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.