European elections, autonomy and beyond: all the objectives of the League

Salvini's League is organizing itself in view of the European elections: this is how the latest edition of Pontida went. Paola Sacchi's note

Matteo Salvini proclaimed it from the stage: “Pontida is forever”. This year was the celebration of a League that, after having returned to government, wants to win again. To be central in Giorgia Meloni's government, which, assures the Northern League leader, deputy prime minister and owner of the MIT, will last 5 years. Returning to winning now means challenging Fdi with the aim of becoming a hegemonic "catch-all" party, transversal center of gravity, as the League demonstrated with 34 percent at the European elections 4 years ago, and again in 2019 with the sensational, subsequent change in former deep red fort of the small but highly symbolic Umbria, recovering from 60 years of communist and post-PCI power.

To remain "in the green heart of Italy" – as Donatella Tesei, Northern League president of Umbria, recalled from the stage – from the workers, to cite an example of the presences on the "sacred soil", to the engineers of the Terni steelworks and the anchor significant impact, this is the model that the League intends to relaunch everywhere. That is, workers, temporary workers, the lower middle class and tending towards the upper end of professionals and small-medium private entrepreneurs. A large delegation from Terni, despite the searing defeat inflicted by the contractor Stefano Bandecchi, due to a basic macroscopic error on the part of Fdi.

Local examples, but symbolic for future challenges. The League is no longer there to play the part of Cinderella. It was the meaning of the conclusions of a very toned Matteo Salvini. He's also lost a bit of weight since he stopped smoking. A Salvini who paid homage several times to the inventor of the most symbolic gathering, Umberto Bossi, now 82 years old, founder of the Northern League. Then national with Salvini who saved it or "saved", to play on words, from the precipice of just over 3 percent. From Salvini – alongside Marine Le Pen, very elegant in her look and with pragmatic tones on the firm principles of the Rassemblement national, the leading party in France, according to the polls – comes a very simple, clear, but not simplistic message: the government of Giorgia Meloni it will last for the entire 5 years of the legislature. And not only. “I will make ten Pontidas for all the years of a centre-right government,” Salvini chanted.

From Pontida, in fact, starting from the themes of the Northern League's DNA, i.e. Autonomy and stop to uncontrolled immigration, which has now become, in the face of the tragedy of Lampedusa, a stop to invasion, the League puts itself back at the centre. But not in the political sense of the term, despite the numerous flags with the writing "Libertas" not of the old DC, but of a Bengali sports association. By center here we mean representation of the small and medium productive classes. Those that Bossi "alone, first" – Salvini recalled – represented". In the first section, his battered Citroen, full of posters, flyers, buckets of glue, the same kind of furniture as the car in which a very young Salvini, who later joined the city council, traveled between one market and another in Milan. “The only one of us who made it big in Milan even among the good kids of Via della Spiga”, exponents of the then true Bossians also told me.

Salvini with the "ringworm" of a 50-year-old young man, very young in politics, ensures a loyal alliance with Meloni. But, unlike the somewhat dazed or falsely dazed interpretations of the mainstream media, Salvini does not submit to the prime minister. He tactically softens his tone compared to those of a few days ago, like the consummate politician he is. They were words, under the surface, to remind Meloni not to remain exclusively on the very correct line of international agreements, starting from the explosive drama in Tunisia.

In Pontida he praised the prime minister's work and underlined that "there is no separation between Pontida and the visit of Ursula von der Leyen, accompanied by Meloni, to Lampedusa". The prime minister, pressed by Salvini, announced the tightening of the line against landings and the council of ministers approved the crackdown last night. Salvini from the "ringworm" of "never mule", the Northern League motto raised to the nth degree, will however continue on the line of Pontida, the annual pact signed with the "sacred Pratone" who asked him to make the League once again decisive for dictate the agenda.

Therefore, the opposite happens with respect to the narrative of the opposition and the media close to them. The arrival of President Le Pen (Salvini, her lifelong personal friend, gave her a book on the Strait Bridge) does not put Salvini in a corner at all. The opposite happens, however. Le Pen has not spoken of leaving Europe. “Madame”, as French President Emmanuel Macron called her during “Le debat”, spoke of a Europe of peoples, which hinges on national identities, against “ green fundamentalisms of electric cars which would only benefit China, or the choice of bureaucracies and “the socialists” for foods such as “synthetic steak”, “against the tradition of high quality French and Italian food products”.

These are things against which, in addition to Salvini's League, forces such as the Conservatives of which Meloni herself is president in Europe could converge, but without having yet officially spoken out, or the EPP itself. Which with Manfred Weber, president, and Antonio Tajani, vice president and Italian leader, have so far clearly closed the door. “Madame”, who is in “Identity and democracy” with the League and the German right Afd, Weber's opponent in Germany – also for whom Salvini asks that the alliance be expanded for the European elections, to "send the left to the opposition in the EU too – in Pontida he avoided extremist tones. He preferred to focus on the pragmatic aspect of policies in Europe, underlining the model and "pride" that Salvini as Minister of the Interior, with the blocking of landings, through the security decrees, "also represented for us French".

Leading the way for Salvini, despite the narrative or rather hope of the left which with the close media had pitted them against the leader, were the powerful governors of Veneto, the plebiscite Luca Zaia ("Veneto vote has now replaced Bulgarian vote" ), and the youngest governor of Friuli, Massimiliano Fedriga. The latter declared himself more than in agreement with Salvini's line of rejections, recalling the funding for Turkey to stop the Balkan route. Zaia went further and his speech was critical of the EU president, sounding reflexively unenthusiastic even for Meloni herself: "Ursula von der Leyen can go to Lampedusa at the invitation of our prime minister, but on her return she immediately starts working for keep our commitments." But the harshest attack is on autonomy, won by Veneto with a referendum that was practically Bulgarian, “or rather Venetian”, jokes Zaia, who praises “the excellent work done so far by Minister Roberto Calderoli. But Meloni warns, although he does not name her, that "Leon" is "pissed off" regarding the timing of Autonomy, already foreseen in the Constitution. More: "The League must not follow the line, but must give the line, even on civil rights."

Here Salvini cools a certain enthusiasm among his followers for General Vannacci's book. He defends the general on freedom of expression, says no and then no to "throwing books at the stake". But he warns, slightly surprising the crowd and others, who always fill him with applause, that “a heterosexual is normal, but a homosexual is also normal. In 2023 there must be freedom to love." “But – he continues – children are born from a man and a woman”. Therefore “never, ever rent a womb”.

League of struggle and government, according to the scheme of which the party-movement has always been the champion, but also League for internal electoral campaign within the centre-right to regain the votes lost to the advantage of FdI. This is what the Pratone claimed. Who was moved by Salvini's memory of Roberto Maroni and cried when he remembered "our great Italian friend Silvio Berlusconi". Big applause. And then along the lines of the slogan for "Silvio" at the Italian conventions, putting the word captain in place of president, "There is only one captain", shouted in a rhythmic way. A strong league in the government and in the centre-right with the peculiarity of being more liberal than FdI on civil rights, as well as on tax reduction with greater emphasis on the need to extend the flat tax. Salvini only defended taxes for banks' extra profits "to increase salaries and pensions".

Finally, praise for Bossi, "without whom we wouldn't be here today" and there are best wishes for his birthday, the 82 years that the Senatùr will celebrate with his family and a few close friends. Sources close to Bossi, however, announce to press agencies that "there was no invitation to Pontida" for him. The agencies also reported sentences from a book with a preface by the Senatùr which states that nationalism cannot be reconciled with federalism and autonomy. Therefore, outright rejection of Marine Le Pen's presence. In any case, for today's birthday of the Senatùr, we can expect a new message of good wishes to "Umberto" from "Matteo". Pontida is something more than a party celebration. It is a celebration of a community, united by passion and political militancy, also by joy on the part of people who spend hours on the bus leaving the night before, even from the South. Pontida is "something unique in the political panorama". This was recognized by the same media observers close to the left, who were at the 2023 event. This year it started a day earlier, Saturday 16th, where young people were the protagonists with the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/matteo-salvini-pontida-2023/ on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 06:10:59 +0000.