Try as I might to comprehend the turbulence in Italian politics at the end of August, I was confused. So I asked my dear friend Nicola Benvenuti of Florence to clarify things. He wrote this piece in mid-September, but it took all my Italian chops and several back and forths with Nicola to get a worthy translation. Sorry for the delay, but it remains timely nevertheless. – Peter Olney

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After his party’s victory in the European elections with 34% of the vote (from 17,4% in the previous national election of 2018), Matteo Salvini, secretary of Lega, was in a hurry to convert these results into greater domestic parliamentary power. He had achieved this success as Interior Minister of the “yellow-green” government (Five Star Movement (M5S) +  Lega) thanks above all to anti-immigrant propaganda, a security policy that played on people’s fears and his ability to establish a direct emotional connection with Italians. So he provoked a government crisis hoping for early elections; but this proved to be a fatal error. The M5S had fallen from 32.7% in the Italian elections of 2018 to 17.1 in the European ones, and therefore had the opposite problem and wanted to avoid new elections. This made the party willing to seek an alliance with its  archenemy, the Partito Democratico (PD), the second party in Parliament at 19%. Salvini was therefore a victim of his own political arrogance and of the populistic policy that made him forget that in a democratic regime it is the Parliament that decrees the need to call new elections and not those who at that time have the support of the masses! For his mistake he was excluded from the government.

“… thus was born the “yellow red” government M5S-PD”

It was the former secretary of the Democratic Party (PD) and former Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, who took advantage of the situation promptly, even bypassing his party secretary with an interview in the newspaper La Repubblica that called it a crime against democracy not to take the opportunity to stop Salvini’s rise! The party could only follow him (agreeing to vote for a populist and anti-political measure to decrease the number of parliamentarians as proposed by the M5S): thus was born the “yellow red” government M5S-PD.

The first thing that was striking was the international favor that greeted the new Italian government. Europe was relieved to see the removal from Italian government of Matteo Salvini, one of the best known “sovranisti”. (Term for right wing-nationalists in Europe who denounce the loss of “sovreignity” of the national government because of the intrusion of foreign strong powers – e.g. EU Commission). The “sovranisti” were defeated in the recent European elections but not in Italy though, where they virtually became the first party. But they are still a significant force and likely to regain momentum if European policy continues to prove incapable of true integration,  and incapable of correcting the growing national, economical and social divisions of recent years. The prudence of other European “sovranisti” such as the Hungarian Orban who did not openly take the field against the EU, and on the inextricable mess created by the Tory leader Boris Johnson in the management of Brexit, has reduced the appeal of anti-Europeanism.

President Trump himself, who looked favorably on Salvini’s anti-European policy, changed his attitude because of Salvini’s open sympathy for Putin’s Russia as a political model. Russia was suspected of supporting with fake news and targeted messages the popularity of the Lega in recent years. These suspicions are supported by the revelation of negotiations in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow  for a large bribe to Salvini’s party in exchange for a contract for the supply of oil to Italy. This was revealed by the US social media/news site Buzzfeed and is currently being brought to the attention of the Italian judiciary.

The “yellow red” government, however, has also raised displeasure on the left. Some on the left would have preferred to go to elections given the collapse, as reflected in the polls, of the M5S from 32.7% in 2018 to below 20% opening the possibility that the PD would be able to recover the many voters who had defected to the M5S. However in the Italian situation that has seen the disappearance of the center (Berlusconi’s Forza Italia has lost most of its voters to the Lega), the moderate electorate would have been pushed, according to the polls, towards the Lega and only in part towards the PD. The Lega would surely have suffered negative repercussions because of the mistakes of its leader but as the polls seem to confirm, it would not have lost significant support. But then if the Lega had, as Salvini asked with anti-democratic and threatening tones, “full powers” to get rid of the M5S constraints on its program, Italian democracy could have been in danger; in any case a spiral of political uncertainty would have been created with very uncertain results. Furthermore, the elections would have blocked the approval of urgent and non-postponable economic measures, including the Budget Law.

“ … A new climate seems to be emerging in the EU that could be a prelude to greater collaboration in the management of the flow of immigrants and”

Doubts have existed and continue to exist over the competence, but above all over the political reliability, of the M5S. All the more considering the very sharp tensions that have characterized relations between the M5S and PD dating back to the origins of Five Star led by comedian Beppe Grillo. Regardless of historical tensions the M5S has every interest in not letting this government fail on pain of its own disappearance from the political scene. Furthermore, it seems credible that a new political orientation of the M5S has been developed in its approach to the EU, directed by Prime Minister Conte (purposefully chosen again as the head of the new government) during the negotiations to support the Italian economic position; an approach that culminated in the support of the M5S for the election of Ursula Von der Leyen as President of the European Commission: those votes proved to be decisive for her election.

This evolution explains why the Italian Paolo Gentiloni (PD) was assigned the Presidency of the crucial Economic Commission of the European Parliament, after another Italian, David Sassoli (PD) was elected President of the European Parliament. A new climate seems to be emerging in the EU that could be a prelude to greater collaboration in the management of the flow of immigrants and in the design of an expansive economic policy (obstinately opposed by Germany, but to which Germany itself may have to agree to).

However difficult, the program of the new government may have a future. But not so fast! On September 17 Matteo Renzi left the PD accusing the current management of the party of stale and losing policies. He is setting up a new formation with the deputies of the PD who follow him, to be named “Italia Viva”. He also maintains that his new formation will support the Giuseppe Conte government and that it would only participate in the elections when the legislature ends. Renzi’s intention seems to be to occupy ​​a vacant political center due first to the successes of Salvini’s right-wing (which in the polls would drain the centrist party Forza Italia), and the radicalization of the left position of the PD which the decimated M5S has accentuated in their attempt to stand up to the League. His group will have about 30 PD deputies and probably will be enlarged by deputies from the Forza Italia area. Italia Viva is therefore in existence only as a formation born to condition the “yellow red” government effectively making Renzi the determining force in Italian politics.

This reminds us, from the point of view of the left, that the common thread that characterizes Italian political uncertainty of this decade is the crisis of the main force of the left, the Democratic Party born only in 2007 from the merger between the Left Democrats (DS) heirs of the Partito Comunista Italiano and the Margherita, heir of the left wing of the Christian Democrats. The new party experienced a new deal: following the primaries won by Matteo Renzi, the “scrapper” of the leadership group with roots in the PCI; the party then suffered in 2017 the split of some former leaders from the DS, which led to the birth of Liberi E Uguali (LEU), a formation that, far from picking up the votes of the old DS party, remained barely qualified to be in parliament with just over 3%. Since then the policy of the Democratic Party has focused on exhausting discussions between political currents pro or contra Renzi. It has revealed itself incapable of speaking to Italian society and effectively confronting the 5S on the program to revive economic development and support economically weaker classes. Furthermore the PD was slow to realize that after the European elections of 2019, a new climate of collaboration had been established between 5S and EU, and was caught off guard by the crisis of the yellow-green government.

Matteo Renzi, on the other hand, understood this as he demonstrated with his proposal to ally with M5S. But his alleged political ability brings him closer to his right-wing namesake, Matteo Salvini. In fact Matteo Renzi in his propensity for improvised moves motivated by too much self agrandisement resembles the Matteo head of the Lega! Renzi declared in 2016 that if the referendum on Constitutional Law agreed to with the center-right did not pass, he would resign: a clear invitation for those who wanted to resize his role and the reform was rejected. So if Matteo Salvini underestimated parliamentary relations, Matteo Renzi has in the past underestimated the strength of the masses, with the same disastrous results! It would be good to remember it.

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