Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has slammed the European Union for its “vicious and dismissive” attitude towards Britain, adding the bloc is treating British voters with “contempt”.

Bannon, who is in Italy to observe the elections there on March 4th, told the Telegraph newspaper that “Brussels has been vicious and dismissive [towards Britain]” since the Brexit vote.

“The contempt that Brussels has shown for the mandate of the working men and women of Great Britain, who want out, has been to me nothing short of shocking.

“They haven’t accommodated anything, they have made everything as tough as possible. It’s not even been a negotiation. It’s been by fiat.”

President Trump Gets Tough on EU After Juncker Threatens Taxes on Jeans, Bourbon, and Harley-Davidsons https://t.co/Lis71DLBx3 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 3, 2018

The former Breitbart News executive chairman said the “party of Davos” — a reference to the globalist business and political elite — had treated Italy with similar “contempt” since the onset of the migrant crisis.

“I would say to the Italians, look at how Brussels has responded to the mandate the British people gave their government to get out [of the EU],” he said, describing the rise of populist parties such as the 5-Star Movement and Matteo Salvini’s Lega party as an indictment of the European establishment.

“Italy is, more than anywhere else in the world right now, even more than Brexit, even more than the Trump revolution in the US, the cutting edge of the sovereignty movement, of people saying we’ve tried to play by the rules, we’ve voted in centre-Left governments and centre-Right governments, and none of that has worked,” he said.

“So now people are looking at another alternative. What they want is power back to the people in a populist revolt.”

The veteran campaigner predicted “hysteria” in Brussels if populists perform as strongly as expected in Italy: “This [election] is an existential threat to the EU because Italy was a founding member of the European project and there is no country in Europe that bought in more to the European project than Italy,” he said.

“Italians put their faith in the institutions of Europe but those institutions drove the economic problem and the problem of migration.

“What you see is an absolutely rational reaction to institutional failure. That is why this election is so important.”

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery