A law professor with zero political experience has been nominated as Italy’s next prime minister.

Giuseppe Conte, who teaches public administration law at Florence University, was educated at Yale, the Sorbonne and – briefly, for a month – Cambridge University.

He was chosen as a neutral, acceptable compromise candidate by Luigi Di Maio, the head of the Five Star Movement, and Matteo Salvini, the head of the hard-Right League party, who both ruled themselves out of the top job.

But it was a strange choice in many ways – Mr Conte is just the kind of establishment, elitist, academic “technocrat” that the Five Star Movement in particular has spent years railing against.

He will have a tough challenge acting as go-between – the League and Five Star diverge on some key issues and the personalities of their leaders are very different.

Professor Conte is not an MP, nor a member of either of the parties, but is said to be close to Five Star.