I’ll tell you about the transversalism of Salvini’s League even after Pontida
All Salvini's political objectives for the League after Pontida. Paola Sacchi's note
It might seem like the strangest of paradoxes but it is politically incorrect to continue to identify the League, even in the centre-right media, as a right-wing force. And this despite the presence of Marine Le Pen in Pontida – who however spoke about issues on which the EPP could objectively converge, starting from green fundamentalism -, despite the wave of the harsh controversy against the director of the Egyptian Museum of Turin, for discounts only for those of the Muslim faith, which sees the Northern League deputy secretary, Andrea Crippa, in the front row.
Matteo Salvini's League, certainly in view of the European Championships, is clear that it will try to regain ground even in those spaces left uncovered on the right by FdI. But these are the physiological laws of politics, in an electoral campaign where we run with proportional representation. Although Salvini assured from the Pontida stage that Giorgia Meloni's government will continue for five years.
In Pontida, however, Salvini also looked at the so-called "centre", according to the Northern League DNA for which the League and not only FI, for other reasons, is the "centre", as the Northern League group leader Massimiliano Romeo once reiterated in the Senate. It is obvious that by "centre" we do not mean that of the Christian Democrats in terms of political strategy. However, there is something in common in terms of the transversality of social representation.
Salvini, as we wrote in the article on Pontida , countering the hegemonic party aims of FdI, intends to relaunch that transversal party which took 34 percent in the 2019 European elections and subsequently conquered the red fort of Umbria, small but symbolic, because there it was deeper red than the Marche, first Forlanian, then passed to the DS, but never PCI, finally conquered by FdI. Salvini had an impact on transversal groups, from the working class to the middle class, which also tended towards the upper class. And the mayor of Perugia from FI, Andrea Romizi, a forty-year-old himself from the upper middle class, also contributed to that victory in Umbria. But naturally the most sensational result was that of the European elections, in which his drastic reduction in landings as Minister of the Interior was rewarded. Which is why "I won", as he states with bitter irony, the "only trials", of which there is one still standing which on October 6 will see a Hollywood star, Richard Gere, as its witnesses. Welcome to “Cinema Italia”.
The transversal party operation, once green and now blue whale type, but not exclusively labeled as "sovereignist", has always been part of the Northern League's vocation, even more so in Salvini's National League. Which in the economy and beyond does not have the still marked statist dirigisme of FdI. Which for the battle on tax reduction is closer to Forza Italia, as well as on justice. Liberal battles.
Salvini promoted a referendum on justice with the Radicals not supported by Fdi. Not only that: Salvini, after Silvio Berlusconi and Antonio Tajani, founder and successor of FI, the liberal party par excellence, has so far been the other center-right leader to express a public opinion, clear of appreciation for Bettino Craxi and his work as a statesman reformist. On the lawn of Pontida and from the stage last Sunday, as always, there were no slogans such as "God, homeland and family", even though Salvini firmly reiterated his defense of the family, his clear no to the rented womb, since “children are born to a man and a woman”. There were no pressing invitations with a statist flavor to have children, although the League in turn fights, like FdI, against the birth rate decline and is even tougher against the "immigrant invasion", explicitly calling into question, as Salvini did , George Soros. League with a secular spirit, albeit a believer like the leader, who from Pontida defended the freedom of a general to write books, but with Salvini also underlined that "the freedom to love is not a matter of the State, that heterosexuality and homosexuality are normal ”, therefore equal. “Because in 2023 it is inconceivable to make these distinctions,” said Salvini, while underlining his lack of appreciation for gay pride events.
For all this, although it seems like a strange paradox, it is politically incorrect to dismiss the League, "identitarian, federalist and autonomist", as Salvini also specified at the recent foreign press conference, as a right-wing conservative party. Which instead is FdI. And given the central presence of FI, the governing coalition can only be defined as centre-right. If only because the centre, apart from Matteo Renzi's small IV contractor, cannot even be seen with powerful binoculars from the parts of an increasingly radicalized left.
Meanwhile, the League on Immigration applauds the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella who judged the Dublin rules to be "prehistory". “Clear and unequivocal words”: this is how a note from the League comments, with “deep appreciation”, the words of the Head of State. To whose re-election the League itself with FI, as regards the centre-right, contributed.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/lega-salvini-centrodestra/ on Fri, 22 Sep 2023 06:13:36 +0000.