Europe's anxious middle classes moving right, but for how long?

Marine Le Pen (AP)

Katya Adler
© Telegraph Media Group Limited

'Is that him? It's the sound of his motorbike escort, I'm sure of it!" The heaving crowd I found myself in under the scorching Sicilian sun late last September was edgy, expectant and oh-so Italian.

Who was the handsome leather-clad biker on a purring Piaggio amid whoops and yells of adulation? No film star or pop idol, I soon discovered, but Alessandro di Battista, a prominent figure in the populist Five Star Movement - an opposition party, but Italy's most talked-about political group.