Realpolitik

Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement (FSM) - which claims to have broken the mould of Italian politics - came crashing into the real world the other day - faced with their very first vote in the Upper House of Italy's two-tier parliament.

Newly elected 'senators' came together to elect the Speaker of the Senate on Saturday - in a contest which came down to a straight choice between the following two candidates:

Pietro Grasso - Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutor, a Sicilian judge. 
Renate Schifani - another Sicilian, but one accused of Mafia ties and the outgoing Speaker  who was installed with the support of Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition.

Now Beppe Grillo and the FSM leadership - which has made a great virtue of refusing to back and of the established political parties - ordered FSM senators not to vote and instead to leave their ballot papers empty.

Yet all six of the FSM senators from Sicily - where the movement is very strong apparently - led a rebellion from within the rebel FSM group.

“If Schifani wins, they won’t let me back across the Straits. They’ll think I’m a Mafioso,” one reportedly complained.

FSM supporters piled in and joined the protest on Twitter and Facebook with comments such as:

“If we don’t know how to choose between Grasso and Schifani, it’s really the end. Bye-bye to the movement.”

So, as Sean Connery was fond of saying in his role as the tough, Irish street cop in the famous crime movie 'The Untouchables':

"There endeth the first lesson'.  

And welcome to the real world of making hard choices - in politics and government.