I saw a good interview with Spinelli, a mild-mannered woman with good intentions and venerable father, but that was it, incisive unfortunately it wasn't...

Thanks for your diligence in finding hearteningly intelligent actions by the L'Altra Europa group.

They may catch a few votes from people who don't trust the MV5. They are too academic for the voters though and their web presence is negligible, social media wise.

Beppe's blog is huge, and the comments aren't stupid either. He was in the vanguard of political blogging worldwide, the Dkos of Italy, if Dkos had its own party.

Di Maio more than held his own at the live stream with Renzi on the 17th, put him in his place more than a few times, reducing him to babbling froth on others. (Mind you Renzi is an expert frothbabbler, like TB.)

What's politically embarrassing for the PD is their resistance to letting go of the Nazarene pact with B, and their ever-more obvious efforts to wangle Berlu a presidential pardon fuels a lot of anger that the Mv5 are channeling into good (imo) politics. B's megalomania just got an un-needed shot in the arm from his acquittal yesterday, so he is dipping his scummy oar in, though it's possible he's actually damaging the R's ability to cohere by not just going away somewhere where there's no TV cameras for a while.

Like Beppe with Mv5, who do better when he takes a back seat! Too short a fuse, makes funny comedy but too much -even comic- ire scares the grandma vote away.

And there's lots of voter granmas here who think he's Frank Sinatra and Francis of Assisi rolled into one...

Tsipras are just dabbling in Italy in comparison, though they have integrity and made the 4% vote, just.

They'd be better off colonising intellectuals and joining Beppe, imho. Firebrands do come in handy to get a platform off the ground.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty