Matteo Renzi served as Italy’s Prime Minister from 2014 to 2016, becoming the youngest leader in the country’s modern history at just 39 years old.
In a nation famous back then for governments that lasted about as long as a swipe on a dating app, his two-and-a-half years in office actually beat the postwar average.
He resigned after putting his job on the line to push through a referendum on reducing the size and changing the composition of the upper house of parliament, the Senate. He lost, so he resigned. Brings to mind the famous LP Hartley quote, “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.”
