DONORATICO. The wounded Lega takes refuge on the Tuscan coast to celebrate the longest-lasting government in the republican history. Not in Milan, not in Venice. Some malign that it is a way to “stay away from the federalists who in the North want to get rid of Salvini.” At the benches, there is the usual arsenal of kitschy-flavored gadgets: bottles of Bolgheri and Vermentino branded Lega, the pack of “anti-communist spaghetti,” and the indispensable latest book of the secretary. Precisely him, Matteo Salvini, who as soon as he arrives in “enemy territory” – jokes about the dinner “is it based on kebab?” – starts with a hurricane of selfies with militants, sends “big kisses” to the mayor of Livorno Salvetti and to the president of the Region Giani, of what he defines as a “former red” region. They govern, but oh well, Salvini needs to galvanize an electorate that feels besieged.
“We are more than 500,” announces the regional commissioner Andrea Crippa. And it wouldn’t even be a bad number considering the place and moment, just don’t make comparisons with the photos coming from Puglia, where Giorgia Meloni celebrates the same milestone but with different numbers.
“We are here to say what we have done, but if we look at the main media and also at the platforms there is a clear setting from a certain side,” says Salvini. Who has been deputy prime minister and minister for 4 years, says he does not want to play “the whiner” but to warm up he touches the old chords of victimhood. The audience follows him, but to return to double digits at the polls more will be needed than playing the battle horses. The atmosphere is not good, between internal siege, with more or less important party comrades asking for his scalp, and a Roberto Vannacci, a virus escaped from the Lega political laboratory, who haunts him every day in the polls.
So he gives three recipes. “More armed soldiers, guys with submachine guns, in the stations. We have 6800 today, we want to reach 10,000.” According to Salvini it would cost 109 million euros.” Migrants? “Revoke residence permits and citizenship from immigrants who commit serious crimes.” And he does not call it emigration, a word now dominated by the former ally general. And the last theme: “Demography, Italy grows too little. Countries where there is Sharia, like Nigeria, grow at a dizzying rate. In Bangladesh there are child brides, a barbarity, we will not allow it to be done in our home. The greatest danger for our women and our families is Islamic fanaticism.” And again, he insists on the economy: “A budget deviation is needed, there is a risk that construction sites will stop. And we have to discuss with Europe, as we did with the Mes.”
Paraphrasing a bearded German philosopher not too loved by those present, “a ghost is haunting the Party.” A ghost in camouflage. For the latest polls Futuro Nazionale has now almost doubled the Carroccio in voting intentions. Salvini to journalists who ask him about it makes the face of someone who does not care. “They have been saying for twenty years that we are in trouble, yet we are in government, we lead 14 regions and have over 500 mayors. I am not afraid of the polls, nor of Vannacci, Schlein or Conte. If the Lega continues to work with coherence and concreteness, Italians will reward us on the day of the vote, which is the only poll that really interests me.”
Naturally, discussing the electoral law, the ideas and amendments coming from his allies, who instead of the numbers (real or presumed) of Vannacci seem really worried. “A single round is necessary, whoever wins governs, whoever loses stays in opposition. I don’t know the reasons of those who launched the runoff, the electoral law should not be thought of based on the polls of the last days.” And the jab at allies who flirt (or fear) the new new man of the right is served.
Salvini recalls that the Lega governs in several Tuscan provincial capitals: “Here too change is possible, the Berlin Wall fell, the one in Livorno will fall.” Yet the crash in the regional elections was thunderous, with over 15 percentage points lost. For this reason, the so-called federalists press Salvini today and ask for a return to a model that looks to the North before sovereignty. Perhaps it is Freudian that Salvini decided to celebrate the government record precisely in Tuscany. In the land where the miracle of the turnaround – with Susanna Ceccardi – seemed possible, and where the nemesis Vannacci was born, who steals consensus by radicalizing archetypal positions of salvinism, the Lega seeks a new path before Pontida. For now, it must be said, the surge is not there.
