Italy’s largest opposition party gets a young and radical new leader

SUDDENLY THEREPDPD PD FI are not one but two women of Italian politics. On February 26th the members of Italy’s centre-left Democratic Party () confounded forecasts by electing as their new leader a 37-year-old radical, Elly Schlein. She was, and is, an outsider in more ways than one. Ms Schlein grew up in Switzerland and has dual American and Italian nationality. She is in a relationship with a woman and was not even a member of the until recently, having quit back in 2015 in protest at the labour-market liberalisation policies of Matteo Renzi, a former prime minister.Ms Schlein’s election has about it both the feel of a wind of change and that of an air of desperation. It signals the latest advance for women in a country that has notably lagged behind others in Europe in terms of female political representation. Until 2013 less than 20% of Italy’s parliamentarians were women—a lower proportion than in Afghanistan. Today, the figure is 31% and since October Italy has had a female prime minister in Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the hard-right (d) party.