Meloni’s shrewd move: backing Elisabetta Gualmini as mayor of Bologna to undermine the PD and Schlein

Meloni can bring down Bologna and the left through cunning. She has an exceptional candidate to overtake Elly Schlein in her own city, exposing the inadequacy of the social centre administration – Mayor Lepore’s ‘Ramallah’. That name is Elisabetta Gualmini, a former MEP for the PD, now with Calenda’s Azione, a political scientist, and wife of Salvatore Vassallo, the professor who drafted the Democratic Party’s constitution. The right is seriously considering backing her as mayor to succeed Lepore. Bologna is Schlein’s family home.

Why is the government exploiting the devastation of the social centres? Why is Meloni travelling to Chiomonte, in Val di Susa, to denounce the hooded terrorists? She is doing so because she wants to prove that violence is a left-wing phenomenon, that the PD provides a safe haven, and that the mayor of Bologna, Lepore – who is now under police protection – is siding with this rabble of misfits. For the past two days in his own city, where he authorised the ‘march of rage’, Lepore has been insulted by the social centres – the very same ones he thought he was managing. He is being chased whilst people shout: ‘Murderous police. Lepore the executioner’. There is a city that Meloni sees as up for grabs, and that city is not Milan, but Bologna – the city that the right wing captured with Guazzaloca. Taking Bologna carries significance. If Mayor Lepore falls, the ‘Bologna’ ideal falls; if the city falls, the Schlein–Bonaccini partnership breaks down; if it falls, so too does the support of Prodi and ‘enlightened Bologna’. FdI has so far collected 32,000 signatures against Lepore. He is the mayor who backed Schlein – the candidate most like-minded to him – the mayor who assembled a council with a deputy representing the social centres, Emily Clancy. On the city council sits a left-wing councillor who prides himself on his ‘antagonism’. The paradox is that Lepore is being challenged by the social centres, an archipelago of groups and misfits to whom he would offer no response. The anger that allowed the hooded rioters to wreak havoc in the city centre, following Fakir’s tragic death, stems from Lepore’s decision to build over part of the Pilastro neighbourhood. This is the famous neighbourhood where Salvini made his infamous intercom call (“Excuse me, are you dealing drugs?”). Ironically, no one noticed that Lepore, the day after that violent march, went to see Salvini at the ministry to be received. They had their photograph taken as proof that Italy is a nation turned upside down. Salvini, who at that very moment was denouncing the Lepore council, was welcoming Lepore. It’s one of two things: either words no longer have any meaning, or Salvini and Lepore are the same. And they are not.

The phrase Schlein keeps repeating is that there is “freedom of demonstration” – an excuse for not distancing herself from the violence. In Val di Susa, the first person to say that attacking the police is not demonstrating was Giuseppe Conte. Within the PD, only the security spokesperson, Mauri, had spoken out. For a whole Sunday, people waited for a post from Schlein. Nothing. It only arrived on Monday. Bologna is the city of Il Mulino and the murder of Marco Biagi. And this is where Gualmini comes into the picture. The MEP is considering standing as a candidate, and Meloni’s party is tempted to back her. It is now clear that the social centres will, in turn, field their own candidate who will take votes away from the PD. It cannot be ruled out that Lepore might be ‘promoted’ to the general election by Schlein. In the first round, the left would be in the lead, but Gualmini could be hot on their heels. The turnaround is expected in the run-off. The right can choose either to back Gualmini from the first round or, shrewdly, to push her through to the run-off at a later stage.

This is a scenario that opens up possibilities at national level too. At the centre of it all is a courtship of Meloni. Schlein has failed to realise that the city where she is at her weakest is her own. Governor Michele De Pascale is Lepore’s counterpoint, representing a left-wing stance à la Gualmini. Transformed into a Ramallah, Bologna could surrender to the sobriety embodied by Gualmini. Schlein’s true test is not the party leadership, but this city, the blast furnace of anger. The Sardines have vanished; Virginio Merola, the former mayor, has been forgotten in Parliament by his own party; Bonaccini is struggling, and Prodi is in an even more precarious position. All that remains of Schlein’s Bologna is the smoke from Molotov cocktails and the hatred between the police and the social centres. Bologna is the Ilva of the party secretary.