Betrayal — It’s What Populists Do
With the first body bags already on their way home, and threats to send even more US personnel into harm’s way, Donald Trump’s betrayal of his most important election pledge is as complete as it is devastating to the millions who once trusted him.
But this is nothing unusual. Promising what voters want to hear, but then delivering what powerful and wealthy vested interests want to happen, is not some shocking aberration – it’s just what populists do. It’s such an established ‘thing’ that, to be blunt, the fault lies not so much with the leaders who lie, as with those who believe their lies in the first place.
The thing to grasp is that Trump is not alone in his deceit and his treachery to his base. While all eyes are on the US President’s despicable but all-too predictable blitz on Iran, one of his favourite European leaders is betraying her core voters with an equally cynical and destructive stab in the back.
The guilty party is Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, and her shocking abandonment of her anti-immigration pledge should serve as a warning to British voters tempted to believe the rhetoric and promises being made by her friend and admirer Nigel Farage.
Meloni, a youthful fascist activist turned ambitious ‘right-wing’ politician, was elected by Italians desperately worried about the growing impact of mass immigration on their country, jobs and security. She played on those fears ruthlessly, talking tough to give voters the impression that she would stop the influx, and even reverse it.
The moment she was elected, however, Meloni turned her coat. She shifted from righteous indignation against the EU’s permissive immigration policies, to becoming a collaborator. Worst of all, even as she made a show of cutting the number of immigrants entering Italy illegally, she opened the floodgates to an unprecedented wave of ‘legal’ immigration.
The full scale of Meloni’s betrayal was revealed in a feature article about Meloni in the Daily Telegraph on 2nd March 2026. It is unfortunate that the paper’s blanket paywall policy means that the facts discussed will not become widely known to the British public, because they should give pause for thought for all who believe that some white-knight politician will ride to the rescue and “give us back our country”.
The article opens by looking at the case of two recently arrived Sikhs working on a dairy farm in northern Italy. ‘They are’, explains the article, ‘beneficiaries of a policy quietly introduced by Giorgia Meloni’s government to allow nearly half a million migrants to come legally to Italy over the next three years.’
The reason, according to the Telegraph, is economic. It’s all about the labour shortages which are biting as Italy’s decades of catastrophically low birth rates really start to hit the size and skills of the workforce.
It is this financial reason which makes right-wing politicians like Meloni, Farage, Habib or Lowe so deeply unreliable when it comes to fulfilling any anti-immigration pledges they make in order to get elected. In the end, their big money backers will add to their personal pro-capitalist tendencies to push them to open the doors to more cheap labour.
It’s not even necessary any more, since rapid robotisation and AI are set to replace millions of workers and destroy millions of jobs, but it’s cheaper to import Indians than it is to invest in technology.
Furthermore, new immigrants consume, which is something robots can’t do, so their very presence keeps the capitalist machine rolling, without the inconvenience of having to develop new financial mechanisms to adapt to the technological revolution. Merchant bankers like Farage or Lowe will never challenge the criminal global elite and their fiat money system, but without doing so, mass immigration will remain as much an economic necessity as it is a cultural and genetic disaster.
The exact figure for non-EU labour shortage immigration agreed by Meloni for Italy over the next three years is 497,550. Coverage of this influx tends to obscure the fact that this is not the total number of new residents to be allowed in, but rather the number of work permits, with those who are granted them being allowed to bring in dependents.
Knowing how politicians think and work when they’re stabbing their voters and nations in the back, it is no surprise to learn that the total fresh non-European influx is likely to be somewhere between one and two million. The Telegraph article mentions that one of the two Indians its reporter talked to has his wife and son with him in Italy.
In theory, the work permits only last for nine months, but they are almost automatically extended indefinitely after that, provided that the migrants in question are still in work.
It gets worse. The Telegraph goes on to reveal that the 497,550 (plus dependents) ‘is the second such tranche of legal migrants – the government issued 450,000 permits between 2023 and 2025.’ No wonder that observers say that Meloni is presiding over an Italian ‘Boriswave’.
Work permits for non-EU workers in Italy are issued to the individual applicant, covering their employment or self-employment. Eligible dependents include spouses, minor children, adult dependent children with disabilities, and even, in limited cases, dependent parents. through specific family visa procedures. So much for the ‘tax benefits’ of replacement immigration!
Non-EU workers can apply to take these dependents to Italy at the same time as their own entry or shortly thereafter, via the “accompanying family member” procedure.
The government has reassured the public that this right is tightly restricted but, in reality, all that is needed is proof of relationship (e.g., marriage or birth certificates), sufficient income (typically at least the annual social allowance of around €7,000 plus increments per dependent), suitable housing, and health insurance. All of which those issued work permits will get pretty much automatically.
Naïve enthusiasts for ‘remigration’ like to point to Meloni’s reasonably successful record in cutting the number of illegals entering Italy. In the year 2023-24, for example, the number of sea arrivals was cut by 58%, from 157,650 to 66,441.
That’s a good comparison with the 19% increase seen by Britain, but it still means that Meloni’s “anti-immigration” regime is allowing an influx of combined illegal (by land and air as well as sea) and legal migrants of at least half a million every single year.
Just remember: This is the work of a ‘far-right’ politician – by origin and reputation well to the ‘right’ of both Farage and Lowe – who was elected on account of her fiery rhetoric about “keeping Italy Italian”. Truly, Trump is not alone in stabbing his loyal followers and voters in the back!
It is as yet too early to be sure how Trump’s reckless leap to war for Israel will pan out in Iran and the broader Middle East. Will Iran crumble under the ruinously expensive onslaught, or is the county’s stock of cheap drones and missiles large and well-hidden enough to exhaust the USA’s stocks of high-priced air defence munitions?
If it’s the former, then the question is what sort of new hellishly unstable shambles the neo-cons’ latest adventure will add to those their past no-win wars have already created. Expect waves more refugees! If it’s the latter, then – if you think Trump’s war is foolish and unpopular now, just wait until American ships and bases start to pay the bill for Israel’s latest blood-soaked party.
All that we will find out in due course. What we already know, however, is that the record of Trump and Meloni absolutely bears out the wisdom and eternal relevance of the Biblical warning “Put not your trust in princes”.
https://nickgriffin544956.substack.com/p/betrayal-its-what-populists-do