Avanti Insieme

Avantinsieme.it · April 2026

There is a thread connecting Washington, Budapest and Rome. Few people are reading it with the attention it deserves, but when it snaps, it makes noise everywhere.

Trump has opened negotiations with Iran. A move that blindsided everyone, especially his most devoted allies — those who spent years building their political identity on the axis of a tough West, non-negotiable values, firmness against the enemies of the liberal order. Those who sat down at Trump’s table convinced they were the chosen ones, the privileged partners, the new masters of conservative Europe.

Today those leaders are discovering something uncomfortable: Trump has no allies. Trump has temporary utilities.

Orbán: the first to fall

Viktor Orbán built a political empire selling a precise narrative: a sovereign, Christian Hungary, untouchable, protected by friendship with Trump and contempt for Brussels. For years it worked. European money kept arriving anyway, domestic consensus held, and the Trump umbrella gave him an international standing no other Eastern European leader could match.

Then Trump negotiated with Iran. He talked to Putin on Putin’s terms. He showed that loyalty means nothing — what matters is the interest of the moment. And Orbán suddenly found himself alone: too compromised with Moscow to be credible in Europe, too peripheral to matter in Washington, too worn out at home after years of absolute power.

The Orbán model — the one that Meloni and half of European conservatism looked to as a beacon — has begun to crumble. Not through revolution. Through something worse: irrelevance.

The global right without a compass

The problem with the global right is not just Trump. It is that for years it outsourced its own identity to Trump. It stopped thinking independently, stopped building a vision, and settled for cheerleading a man who does not know the meaning of loyalty.

When Trump negotiates with Iran — the great enemy, the axis of evil country, the one that for decades justified every aggressive foreign policy stance — he sends a crystal-clear message to all his European fans: you count for nothing. I do my business. Figure it out.

And they, suddenly, must figure it out. Without a narrative. Without an independent identity. Without having invested a single day in recent years building something of their own.

Meloni: the defeat you cannot hide

In Italy the signal arrived with the referendum. A defeat the government tried to downplay, reinterpret, make look less serious than it was. But numbers do not lie and politics does not forgive.

Meloni had built her image on solidity, consistency, the woman who never backs down. The referendum cracked that narrative. It did not destroy it — it would be wrong to exaggerate — but it showed that consensus has limits, that Italians know how to say no, and that the government is not as invulnerable as it liked to appear.

And this comes at a moment when the international anchor is growing weaker. The relationship with Trump — which Meloni had cultivated carefully, presenting herself as America’s privileged conservative interlocutor in Europe — is worth less than before. Because a Trump who negotiates with Iran is an unpredictable Trump. And an ally of an unpredictable Trump is, by definition, an unpredictable ally.

In Europe, that costs you. Macron knows it. The chancelleries know it. And sooner or later Meloni will find out the hard way.

The domino

The mechanism is simple and inexorable. Trump cuts loose his European allies by acting autonomously and unpredictably. The European allies lose the narrative that held them together. Without a narrative, domestic consensus erodes. With eroded consensus, the electoral defeats arrive — a referendum today, an election tomorrow.

The domino has already started to fall. Orbán is wobbling. Meloni has been hit. The others — from Le Pen in France to the British Conservatives — look in the mirror and no longer recognise their own reflection.

The global right is not living through a government crisis. It is living through a crisis of meaning. It no longer knows what it wants to be, what it represents, who it speaks to. It chased Trump thinking it was riding a wave. It is now discovering that the wave goes nowhere — or worse, it goes where Trump decides, which is a place where none of his allies are welcome.

What this means for Italy

For Italy it means the centre-left has a window. Not guaranteed, not automatic — windows in politics open and close fast. But real.

It means Meloni will have to find her own independent voice in Europe, stepping out of Trump’s shadow, if she wants to survive politically to the end of her term. It means the Italian right must decide what it wants to be when it grows up, without the American father figure covering its back.

And it means, above all, that those in opposition must be ready. They must have proposals, candidates, a vision. Because the enemy’s crisis does not automatically become your victory.

The domino is falling. The question is who will be ready to pick up the pieces.

Avantinsieme.it — real politics, no filters.