With a popularity rating of 59 per cent and his right-wing Lega movement’s poll figures now double the vote it took in last year’s general election, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini is the man of the moment. The selfie-obsessed politician has made ample use of social media to bypass established media channels, cutting out the middleman to get his message across directly to Italian voters.
Essential to Salvini’s popularity has been his firm – and much criticised – stand against illegal immigration and people trafficking amid the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. Since the NATO intervention in Libya, a long stretch of the North African littoral is now a lawless and ungoverned area. Criminal gangs have stepped into the breach, preying on the hopes of thousands of disadvantaged people across Africa and the Middle East, extracting huge profits with the promise of getting migrants into Europe.
