Pizza and (Swiss) Politics
Normally, pizza is not very political.
Sure, there may be intense discussions about the value of the so-called Hawaiian variation.
If you hail from Italy - and especially from Napoli - there can hardly be a worse culinary heresy than putting ham and pineapple on top of pizza dough.
But as a rule, pizza in all its various forms stays neutral - much like Switzerland. It exists to be eaten - punkt, fertig.
And yet as 2026 rolls around, there is the distinct feeling that political discourse among Swiss politicians is currently suffering from the same chronic ailment that too often befalls a prosciutto e fungi from Dieci pizza: crustless consumption.
Confused?
Think back to the last time you picked up a margarita from Bachmann.
If you are like most lovers of pizza, you dove into the first slice with gusto, followed by the second and third until the entirety had been consumed.
Well - almost.
Not everything is eaten, of course.
The green and red cardboard box holds the remnants of your piping hot pizza, the pitiful collection of abandoned crusts which so faithfully served to help you pick up and consume the meaty, cheesy substance you have just enjoyed.
After all, the ‘good stuff’ is in the middle. No one eats the crust. We have all done it. We will all do it again at some point in the future.
But when politics follows the pizza-eating habit, we are in trouble.
Surprisingly enough, both the left and right in Switzerland are guilty of this short-sighted tendency.
Christoph Blocher’s SVP has a hard line.
SVP and the 10-million Switzerland initiative
In June of next year - most likely - Swiss voters will go to the polls to decide whether to limit the total number of residents to 10 million by the year 2050.
The referendum’s initiators, Christoph Blocher’s right-wing SVP, call it a “Sustainability Vote”. Opponents label it the “Chaos Initiative.”
Battle lines have been drawn - and surprisingly enough, early polling shows a strong percentage in favor.
Those who do are would do to Switzerland what we do to pizza - devour the good bits and cast away the plain, chewy, less tasty crust.
Of course, Switzerland wants the well-educated immigrants who pour into the country to fill highly-paid jobs at Google, Roche or ABB, along with all of their tax revenue.
Sure, they would like to preserve the high standard of living that Switzerland enjoys, along with top-notch services, punctual trains and nursing homes filled with sweet and caring nurses.
Who wouldn’t?
But the fact of the matter is that immigration - well-controlled, moderate and well-integrated immigration - is a key part of the engine that makes Switzerland tick.
Without it, key services would fail. Critical infrastructure, no matter how well-built. would cease to function for a lack of skilled labor.
Immigration is, in other words, the crust that holds the Swiss pizza together.
An indiscriminate move to cut off the flow of new and much-needed talent from outside the country would be like gobbling up the meat and cheese with little or no regard for what actually makes it possible to actually eat the pizza in the first place: the crust.
SP leaders Cédric Wermutch and Mattea Meyer
Learning from the left
Lest we think that SVP invented politics as a picky-choosy, pizza-eating exercise, it is clear that this phenomenon has a strong base on the left-side of the political spectrum where tax-and-spend policies are standard fare.
With every push to “take” from the top and “give” to the bottom, left-wing politicians espouse the same faulty approach to running a country.
The latest Juso referendum is a key case-in-point.
Taking 50% of all large inheritances (over CHF 50 million) would been almost 100% analogous to the way we consume our Dieci.
The left would have willingly ignore the “blood, sweat and tears” of independent, self-reliant ambitious entrepreneurs who risk everything to build something and declare it the divine right of the state to requisition 50% of their profits at the end of life.
“Give us the meat and cheese - you can keep the crust.”
That is no way to run a country.
A lazy way to do business
If the comparison between Swiss politics - or politics in any country for that matter - and pizza-eating seems extreme and outlandish, too bad.
It happens to be true.
But there is a deeper lesson too: laziness is way too common in politics (no matter where you are.)
To build solutions for society on the principle of selfish selectivity - where you only get the best, without having to pay the price - is the very definition of intellectual ineptitude. And it is born of a twisted desire for quick fixes and easy recipes.
SP would make the world a better place by ramming through prescriptive, top-down wealth-grabbing solutions. SVP would battle the ills of immigration by cutting off its hand to spite its face.
Surely, there are some Swiss politicians who have the patience and wisdom to reject the “easy-way-out” approach to winning popularity as well as the guts to find more holistic solutions that don’t result in a “graveyard” of productivity and industriousness thrown aside like three week-old pizza crusts.
Maybe - just maybe - there is some way to do to politics what Pizza Hut did to its pizzas: stuff the crust with more cheese so everyone wants to eat it.