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Rishi Sunak, UK prime minister, has been pencilled in as a surprise guest at a political festival organised by Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing Brothers of Italy on Saturday, in a further warming of relations between the two leaders.
In appearing at the Atreju festival, Sunak would follow in the footsteps of former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, who have both appeared in the past.
Sunak’s political relationship with Meloni has blossomed during 2023. At a meeting in Downing Street in April he told his Italian counterpart that their two countries were “very aligned” in values.
The UK prime minister’s allies said plans had been laid for Sunak to travel to the event in Rome this weekend, but had not been confirmed. His attendance at the event “depends on other commitments”, one ally said.
Sunak is confronting major splits in his party on migration and might decide to remain in the UK to try to calm political tensions at home. Downing Street declined to comment. In Rome, a festival organiser confirmed Sunak’s potential attendance. Brothers of Italy declined to comment.
Meloni founded the Atreju festival in 1998 when she was rising through the ranks of a far-right youth movement then still on Italy’s political fringes.
The British prime minister’s planned attendance at this year’s event will cement his efforts to forge a common European approach to tackling irregular migration, one of the topics set to be discussed at the festival.
The two leaders co-chaired a meeting on the subject at the European Political Community meeting in Granada in October, and jointly penned an opinion article calling for tougher European action to stop “the smugglers and traffickers”.
Last month, Meloni struck a deal to build two centres in Albania to process asylum seekers trying to reach the EU by sea. Sunak is trying to push through his plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Meloni, who is concerned about the disruptive impact of AI and its potential to ‘replace’ people throughout the labour market, was the only G7 national leader to attend Sunak’s artificial intelligence summit at Bletchley Park last month.
Italy will take on the G7 presidency in 2024, making Meloni a key ally for Sunak, but his attendance at a party event organised by the Brothers of Italy would take their relationship to a different level.
The Atreju festival — named after the boy hero of the fantasy book and film The NeverEnding Story — was conceived as a festival of debate for the youth wing of the National Alliance, the successor to a neo-fascist party started by allies of the late Benito Mussolini after the second world war.
Over time, Italian politicians from other political streams, on the right and left, also came to court potential votes at the festival.
As Meloni and her far-right Brothers of Italy, which was founded in 2012, grew more influential, the event also managed to attract some of the world’s most controversial political figures.
In 2018, Bannon told the event that the Brothers of Italy were “true disrupters” like Trump and Nigel Farage’s pro-Brexit UK Independence party. “The torch was passed to you,” he told Meloni’s party.
Meanwhile Orbán said on his visit to Atreju in 2019 about himself and other populist politicians: “As our opponents are large, wealthy, strong and well-organised, we are forced to fight a battle which is unjustly difficult.”
Meloni was the main organiser of the festival for many years. In her 2021 autobiography, she wrote that “each year we invite the most important people of the season, people we esteem, people we oppose, or the most debated people, who we are interested in better understanding.”
The current edition of the festival, being held just outside the Vatican, will have a different tone as Meloni celebrates the first year of her ruling coalition. Panels are slated to be packed with government ministers and local Brothers of Italy leaders.
Other guests expected to attend the four-day function that starts on Thursday include Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s right-wing Vox party.
Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome
