Rome — Italy’s populist Five Star Movement and League parties prepared to sweep to power in a spectacular reversal of political fortunes that brings an end to three months of deadlock and opens the way to a period of friction with Europe. Giuseppe Conte, a law professor with no political experience, will be sworn in as prime minister along with his cabinet at 4pm local time on Friday by President Sergio Mattarella. The government was pieced together after weeks of Byzantine wheeler-dealing during which Five Star’s Luigi Di Maio and the anti-immigrant League’s Matteo Salvini managed to mesh their populist programmes — only to pull the plug on a government at the last minute after the president vetoed their pick of a eurosceptic finance minister. With global markets in freefall at the prospect of a possible resurgence of the euro crisis, the populist leaders held on and emerged victorious as their revised cabinet was accepted late on Thursday. Di Maio and Salvini will serve as deputy ...
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