As I write, at 2.30pm, no less than 80 separate demonstrations are being held across the UK as genuinely angry protestors take to the streets in protest against Boris Johnson’s latest ruse (in which he has also involved the Queen, 22 years to the day when popular power almost made her lose her crown over Princess Diana’s death).

Across the continent, in Rome, politicians from the Left and the centre (the Democratic Party and the 5S) are feverishly patching up a would-be governing coalition that may be dead even before it’s born. And the Right are planning massive demonstrations if this coalition makes it to the starting blocks.

In both these cases, the EU is a prime factor: in Rome clearly agitating against Matteo Salvini just as in the 1990s it agitated against Silvio Berlusconi and ultimately removed him, supplanting him with people like Mario Monti with the help or non-opposition of the Left.

In the UK, of course, the EU is with the people on the streets while the heads of government hold fast against Johnson.

Now our EU-inspired spin is that Boris Johnson is a rogue and Matteo Salvini is a crook.

By its actions in the two situations, the EU is on the side of the rule of law against usurpers. It may well get its desires – Boris Johnson unseated and Salvini consigned to outer darkness. But even if it is successful, will the EU and its ultimate aims gain?

Consider the UK: former premier John Major rushed to institute a court case against the suspension of the British parliament when it was he who pushed through the Maastricht Treaty without submitting it to a referendum – the EEC became the EU and gained more powers. Hence the rhetoric against unelected tyrants.

But now the boot is on the other foot: Boris Johnson, who is unelected, has chosen to freeze out parliament for five crucial weeks, so that no opposition to Brexit can be mounted in the short time remaining.

In this he had the complicity of the Sovereign who maybe forgot that a predecessor of hers who shut parliament up ended without a head on Parliament Hill.

In Italy the situation is rather more complicated. The 5S have their internal systems of checks and balances and any agreement on forming a governing coalition must be approved by an internal vote on a system called Rousseau. Until this happens, any PD hope of a governing coalition (and dreams of ministerial posts) must be held in abeyance.

This basic uncertainty could account for the seismic shifts in the 5S’s stances, especially the chilling list of demands which on Thursday looked as though they would upset the entire negotiation. There is a limit to how many conditions the Dems can take even as they aim to turn Italy around and unravel Salvini’s laws and practices.

The truth is that Salvini brought about this summer crisis aiming at an election in which he would be the winner. If an alternative government is set up, he has only himself to blame. And if an election is held and he is the winner, he will have no one to blame for lack of progress as he did this time.

In demonizing him, as in 1994 they demonized Berlusconi, the EU and its allies intrude in the democratic processes of a country and the results are predictably not any better than the leader they unseated.

It will also happen like this in the UK: interfering in the democratic processes of a country will only make things worse, and incidentally prove the Brexiteers right. Johnson is wrong, very wrong, to prorogue parliament but it is the people of the UK who must react to this according to the due processes of the UK democracy. If Johnson has erred (he has) he must be answerable to his people. The other member states must rigidly keep the studied neutrality they have observed so far, even though a no-deal Brexit is bad news for them too.

And it would not be a bad thing if all reflect on this as what happens when the structures of democracy are allowed to rust. Brexit is the culmination of a whole series of mistakes, the inevitable conclusion which it will take years to undo, if ever it does.

So, too, Salvini: he did not spring up from nowhere. He is the conclusion of a whole series of mistakes. He, too, is contributing his own – keeping children on a ship for days on end is just one of them. But then one has to look at him in the light of a veritable invasion of his country.

The EU is a wonderful idea, but its method of implementation is flawed and lacking in parts. These are two fundamental crises, long in the making. The future will be ruled by how it reacts to them just as the future of these two great countries will be ruled by what happens next.

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