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Welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast, and in this week's episode, we'll be looking at Italy's new coalition.

What will the five-star and Lega partnership mean for Italy and for Europe?

We'll also talk about whether conservatives have been hard enough on Israel for its violent put-down of the Gaza protests.

And on a slightly different note, we'll be asking, why are powerful men so fond of being spanked?

First up, Italy is forming a government. In the March elections, no single party

received more than 40% of the vote, leaving the most successful party, the five-star movement,

forming a strange coalition with the party Lega. The two are not natural allies, with five-star

drawing most of its support from the left, and Lega, a member of the Coalition

of the Right.

But, as Nicholas Farrell writes in this week's cover story, Stranger Things Have Happened,

and Frederick Erickson writes that Macron is already preparing to change tack to deal with

the new coalition.

Frederick, who is the director of the European Centre for International Political Economy,

joins us now, together with

Ferdinando Giuliani, Bloomberg and Republic a journalist in Rome. So Ferdinano, can you start by

explaining to us what's brought these two populist parties from the extreme ends of the political

spectrum together? Well, I think the two parties are indeed very different in terms of, for example, where they get most of their votes from.

The Laganort gets most of its votes from the north and the five-star movement from the south.

But actually, there is a fair amount of overlap in terms of, for example, their economic policies.

I mean, both of them have toyed, for example, with the idea that Italy should leave the Eurozone.

And, you know, this is something which they are currently discussing.

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