Why the right suffers in global cities

The examination of the electoral outcome of local administrations is, as always, controversial, which suggests that essentially the balance between political forces has remained practically unchanged. More than on quantitative data, perhaps it is better to focus attention on the signals that can be caught in the distribution of consensus. The new defeat of the center-right in Brescia, a large center of a region like Lombardy in which the center-right has been the majority since time immemorial, suggests that his proposal fails to meet the expectations of a city where the effects of modernity are being felt. Giving answers to modernity from a conservative coalition is not easy, and this is confirmed by its difficulty in excelling in big cities. The old model of liberal conservatism, that of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, in a phase in which the need for a more pervasive commitment of the state to govern problems of a supranational dimension, from the pandemic to war, is not usable. Giorgia Meloni’s “social” centre-right is well aware of this, but the revival of traditional models of coexistence clashes with the effervescence of urban societies.