Giorgia Meloni is championing the motto "God, country and family" and is on course to become Italy's first female prime minister by leading a right-wing coalition, but who is the woman bringing a fresh wave of EU-scepticism and populism to Europe?

Leader of the Brothers of Italy party, Meloni is a one-time supporter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. She will head the most right-wing Italian government since World War II in a coalition with the far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.

The new government faces huge challenges, from rampant inflation to an energy crisis, while critics have said her main credentials are that she is "the only leader the Italians haven't tried yet."

Her backers have pointed to the clarity of her policies which she has shown she is prepared to stick to and not compromise. Meloni has moderated her views over the years, notably abandoning her calls for Italy to leave the EU's single currency.

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But she insists her country must stand up for its national interests, backing Hungary in its rule of law battles with Brussels.

Background

Meloni was a teenage activist, she used to sneak out in the dead of night and help plaster her Rome neighborhood with far-right posters, playing a game of cat and mouse with leftist foes that could easily turn violent.

Fast forward 30 years and she no longer needs clandestine sorties to get her message out. Instead, her image adorns billboards across the country.

"It has been an incredible journey, but if I win the election, then that is not the end. It is really only the beginning," she admitted.

The rapid rise in Meloni's fortunes is intricately tied to the transformation of her own party, the Brothers of Italy, which has moved out of the shadows and into the mainstream without ever fully repudiating its post-fascist roots. 

Friends and critics alike say the surge in support is largely due to the steely determination of 45-year-old Meloni, who won her first local election at 21 and became Italy's youngest ever minister when, at the age of 31, she was given the youth portfolio in Berlusconi's 2008 government.

Her ascent is especially notable considering her humble background in a country where family ties often trump merit. She was brought up by a single mother in a working-class district of the Italian capital after her father abandoned them following her birth, and has made no attempt to lose her strong Roman accent.

In her 2021 autobiography, 'I am Giorgia,' Meloni says she found a new family aged 15 when she joined a local youth section of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), created in 1946 by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Hard-working and feisty, she soon caught the eye of party activist Fabio Rampelli, who organized courses to train what he hoped would be a new generation of conservative politicians.

"My idea was to imagine a right-wing government, which had nothing to do with the (fascism of the) 1930s," said Rampelli, who is deputy head of the Brothers of Italy in parliament. "Meloni was blonde, blue-eyed, petite, easy-going and witty. She was also very concrete and not ideological. All the characteristics we needed to take the Italian Right to the next level," he said.

The MSI was folded into a new body called National Alliance (AN) in the mid-1990s before merging with a mainstream conservative group created by former prime minister Berlusconi.

Co-founder of Brothers of Italy

In her biggest political gamble, Meloni and a contingent of AN veterans left Berlusconi in 2012 and co-founded Brothers of Italy, named after the opening lines of the national anthem. The party maintained the old flame symbol of the original MSI group and Italian media occasionally published photographs showing fascist memorabilia in the offices of some Brothers of Italy regional politicians.

No such relics adorn Meloni's office. Instead, there are numerous angel figurines, snaps of her five-year-old daughter, chess sets, a photograph of Pope John Paul with Mother Teresa, and pots of colored pens she uses to take meticulous notes. She herself dismisses any suggestion her party is nostalgic for the fascist era. She distances herself from a video that emerged this month of her as a teenager speaking in French and praising Mussolini as a "good politician."

"Obviously, I have a different opinion now," she said, without elaborating.

Meloni compares her party to the U.S. Republican Party and the UK's Conservative Party. Patriotism and traditional family values are exulted, while political correctness and global elites are excoriated.

"Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death," she said in a speech in June to supporters of the Spanish rightist party Vox.

"No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people, no to major international finance," she continued, speaking in Spanish, her voice raising to a crescendo of anger.

Unwillingness to compromise

Whereas her allies Salvini and Berlusconi joined forces with the center-left last year to form a unity government under Mario Draghi, Meloni refused, saying appointing an unelected former central banker was undemocratic. The decision left Brothers of Italy as the sole major party in opposition, giving it a pass on having to defend unpopular decisions taken during the COVID-19 emergency.

Meloni has been cautious ahead of the election, urging her allies not to make pledges they cannot keep and promising to be a safe pair of hands managing Italy's fragile public accounts.

She has reassured Italy's establishment, touting a strong pro-West message and vowing to boost defense spending. 

"It will not be the usual 'spaghetti and mandolin' Italy that fails to show up when history beckons," Meloni said.

All the tough-talking inevitably draws comparisons in the Italian press between Meloni and former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Italian leader has played on this, saying one of her main inspirations is the English philosopher Roger Scruton, who provided intellectual vigor to Thatcherism in Britain.

Being Italy's first female prime minister is not something she dwells on. She is opposed to diversity quotas to boost female presence in parliament or the boardroom, saying women have to get to the top on merit. And she says that being a woman has its advantages in macho Italy. "When you are a woman you are often underestimated, but that can help you," she said.