Farewell, Berlusconi – you showed Boris and Trump how it’s done

The former Italian PM’s dubious distinction is that he led the way for a corrosive brand of populism that has afflicted the UK and US, writes Sean O’Grady

Consciously or not, Trump, Johnson, Farage, Le Pen, the German AfD, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Erdogan of Turkey and many others have followed Berlusconi down a road of brash, shameless populism (AFP via Getty)

For British observers at any rate, Silvio Berlusconi held the dubious distinction of being the only person to have been publicly admonished, if indirectly, by Queen Elizabeth II. At the G20 summit in London, we find Her Majesty sandwiched between the then prime minister Gordon Brown and President Lula of Brazil for the usual “family photo”. As the famous video online shows, when it’s done they all get up, and the irrepressible Italian premier starts trying to get the attention of the American president, yelling: “Mr Obama, Mr Obama!” This triggers the Queen to turn round, sigh, and raise her arms in mock frustration, before saying, vaguely in his direction: “What is it? Why does he have to shout?”

Berlusconi’s other dubious distinction is that he served as a kind of prototype for Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, and for the deeply corrosive brand of nationalist populism that has overtaken so many of the Western democracies in recent years – even those, like America and Britain, that fancied themselves immune to being infected by it. Though you can go too far in such tempting analogies, it was a bit like how Mussolini was the first to develop and practice the methods of fascism, which in turn spread across much of Europe and the wider world in the ensuing decades.