Is Salvini really sinking the League?
Paola Sacchi's note
From the "man who saved the League", as a center-right area newspaper headlined a few years ago, to the "black" man, portrayed by the leftist media mainstream as practically the cause of all Italian troubles. Now the same mainstream puts Matteo Salvini, with his Lega remaining third party, despite the overtaking even in the North of FdI, albeit not stratospheric (Lega 15 per cent, with 21 mayors between reconfirmations and new ones, the others went to the ballot in the locality significant) on the same level as the real collapse, from stardust, pentastellato led by Giuseppe Conte (more or less 2 percent in these administrations).
The victory of the center-right (of government and opposition), dry in the first round in big cities like Palermo, torn in incredible and disturbing conditions in the organization of the seats, is obscured to the advantage of the defeat of the yellow-red alliance, Pd-5s , where the Democratic Party remains standing, with its more or less 20 percent, but the five-star ally dissolves. In all the spotlight, however, there is Salvini, the "black man", who, as a note from Via Bellerio points out, also tears some results in the South: "In Messina the 'First Italy' list, the only center-right formation to have supported the winning mayor, is above 5 percent; in Palermo the same list exceeded 5, in Catanzaro 6 ”. It will be said, small figures. But unimaginable only a few years ago.
The point is that the "original sin" attributed to Salvini is having made the National League, broke through the "wall" of the Po, stormed the red fort of Umbria, where he was the main author of the sensational change, even though with the participation of young mayors such as Andrea Romizi (Forza Italia) in Perugia, and having gone as far as the deep South. "Original sin" because, after the crisis in FI, the perfect judicial storm hit Silvio Berlusconi, ousted from politics with the 'retroactive application of the Severino law, on the whole left, including Matteo Renzi's squad (his "game over" on the Cav, also accompanied by ironic if softer jokes by the then prime minister Enrico Letta), was convenient for a league that remained confined to the North, now reduced to just over 3 percent, the abyss from which Salvini saved it, up to peaks of over 30 percent.
The ex-boyfriend of Via Bellerio, the one who in the 90s and early 2000s went around with buckets of glue in the car (Umberto Bossi style of the beginning), posters, flyers, 10 markets in a morning, then change of clothes , put on a crutch in the car, to go to the city council in Milan, which as a professional journalist launched "Radio Padania", was considered a useful political creature but a bit strange even among the same major leaguers of the time. The only one who, to the undersigned, also a political correspondent from the League at the time for Panorama (Mondadori Group), who turned on Salvini was the former leader of the former Northern League in the Chamber Marco Reguzzoni, an iron bossian. Who said: "Look, that (Salvini ed ) is the only one of us who has managed to break through in Milan even among the good guys of Via della Spiga". Despite the media narrative, the League has never been very strong in all of Milan.
The Northern League secretary has always been a movement leader, a leader-journalist, one might say, used to turning the spotlight on the event of the day, as a political scoop, a sort of "hole", they say in journalistic jargon, to give from politician to political opponents on issues they neglect: from security to growing uncontrolled immigration, to bureaucratized Europe. In short, not a leader in plaster casts in the office in a suit and tie, but an itinerant politician, not accustomed to the rites of the "politichese", but on a permanent basis in that territory whose assiduous attendance from Bossi onwards has always been the flagship Northern League. A leader without “political” intermediaries, not born with social media which he then used extensively, always combining them with the territory. A leader without Conte's flamboyant language, whom he is always inappropriately approached even for opposing political views, despite the brief government alliance, and Luigi Di Maio, those Five Stars born with the aim of radically renewing the "old" politics. Indeed, Grillo said: opening the parliament like "a tin of tuna".
Salvini remains standing, the Five Stars dissolve. The Northern League leader moved with his movementist scheme even in the much-criticized days of the Quirinale, up to appearing directly at the home of Sabino Cassese . The biggest scandal among the many scandals contested by the politically correct. Certainly they were not orthodox moves according to the old plot of a palace, but at an increasing risk of disconnection from reality. Certainly Salvini also made mistakes, but other leaders considered more "reliable", judging by their area code numbers, right?
Then, however, we arrive at Salvini's second "original sin", that of having entered the Draghi government of national emergency, having "grunted" himself with government issues, those that affect the lives of Italians, without staying in the streets to protest. Which sent the Democratic Party into a tailspin. Salvini has tried and tries to keep himself in an acrobatic balance between struggle and government, so as not to leave the field open to a pro-tax left, to the Five Stars pro welfarism and ideological environmental choices that we pay heavily today after Russia's war on Ukraine . The acrobatic balance of the "captain" certainly also generates discontent in the so-called "base" of the northern valleys, discontent even in part of the more orthodox League leadership which, however, despite the eternal "Po soap opera" of mainstream paper, knows that ex boyfriend of Via Bellerio can not do without. There remains "the man who saved the League" and who, as assured by the very upper echelons of the League, "still holds the entire package of votes. He makes the lists for the Politics, while the rest is the talk of the newspapers ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/salvini-lega-amministrative/ on Wed, 15 Jun 2022 05:21:07 +0000.