Grillo (once again) against Conte. “The target is the party symbol,” says Prof. Becchi. “And now watch out for Di Battista”

“Grillo’s post? Good grief, but I saw that coming. It was to be expected,” says Professor Paolo Becchi, a native of Genoa like the founder and, at one time, considered the Movement’s ideologue. Beppe Grillo is back on the offensive. In a lengthy blog post, he accused: “The M5S has lost its identity and, above all, that ‘diversity’ which had made it unique. It was founded to change politics, but then politics changed the Movement. It was supposed to focus on the future and ended up focusing on positions of power.” From Fico to Taverna, from Appendino to Raggi, among the long-standing figures – “the revolutionaries who are discovering the corridors of power”, as Grillo calls them – there has been a flood of “no comment” responses. The rebuttals are left to Conte: “He said that Draghi was a Grillo supporter; draw your own conclusions,” he says, using a well-worn argument.

However, even though the founder never mentions it in his speech, it is the legal case over the party symbol with the former prime minister – the hearing for which, subsequently adjourned, was due to take place three days ago – that, according to Becchi, we must focus on. “With Beppe,” he says, “it’s always like this; you have to read between the lines. Before the adjournment, it was known that the case against Conte to reclaim the symbol was due to begin in July. And so, even though the judges adjourned the case, he decided all the same to make his voice heard in another way, sending a message to these magistrates too – who find themselves in a very delicate situation concerning a major party – to tell them: ‘Look, I haven’t forgotten about the case; I care deeply about this matter; you can’t just adjourn it for years to come, because the elections are this year and there must be a ruling before then’”. Luigi Di Maio, Grillo’s former protégé but now a figure within the establishment (even on the international stage), who was in the Chamber of Deputies yesterday for a hearing on the Gulf crisis, also seems to agree with this interpretation. He was there in his capacity as the EU’s special envoy, but, for a few minutes, he reverted – as in the old days – to the role of interpreter of the founder’s messages. When questioned by reporters, he gave his view: “Grillo’s statements are linked to the fact that a ruling on the party symbol is due. It is normal for one of the two sides to use the issue of founding values to assert its integrity.” And Marco Bella, a former MP who has remained very close to Grillo, also agrees that this is precisely what is at stake: “Beppe,” he says, “wants the symbol and the name back, which are his, even if only from a moral standpoint. If I were one of the MPs in Conte’s current party, I’d feel embarrassed to use something that doesn’t belong to me. It’s like someone occupying a house – that doesn’t make them the owner, not by a long shot.”

Grillo, in his long list of ‘betrayed causes’ – universal basic income, direct democracy, the two-term limit and the ecological transition, which, he says, have now become ‘slogans to be trotted out at conferences and forgotten after the buffet’ – also indirectly mentions Musk and his prediction that certain jobs will disappear, making ‘a universal basic income’ necessary. Shortly afterwards, he receives praise from Andrea Stroppa, “Musk’s man in Italy”, who writes in X: “The M5S, a powerful innovation brought to the general public by Grillo and betrayed by wretches. It would be right for it to return to its co-founder and for us to start afresh from the original idea”. This is sufficient for those close to Conte to make snide remarks: “You see, if even Stroppa agrees, it’s because he knows full well that weakening the M5S means favouring the right and Vannacci.” But the real fear is that, beyond the battle over an image and a symbol, there may actually be something happening politically. Grillo’s post ends, after all, with a cryptic sentence: “The Movement was born to tackle these questions, which have not disappeared; they are still out there, outside the halls of power, waiting for someone to try to answer them…”. A threat? “This is the other message hidden between the lines, and it concerns the future,” says Prof. Becchi. “Grillo says that someone needs to try once more to take up the battles of the past. And there is, in fact, someone.” Who? “Alessandro Di Battista has not given up on the idea of a party. He carried out an experiment by collecting signatures against public funding for newspapers. He gathered over 300,000 signatures – not enough for a referendum, but sufficient to stand for election. If the electoral law does not provide for preferential voting, he will enter the fray. And at that point, between the controversial party symbol and a Di Battista returning as the heir to the Movement that once was, things could take a completely different turn.”