Schlein’s plasters. The primaries are now the wound. Bonelli: “Let’s put forward a relative of a victim from Bologna as a candidate.” Conte the “generous one”

Rather than primaries, we need quick fixes. The left’s hope lies with the right. The plan, the grand scheme, is explained by Lorenzo Guerini, the leader of the PD reformists: “Are you sure the electoral law will be passed?” It’s simple, and it’s the salvation. Without a new law, there’s no need for primaries; without primaries, the torment is avoided; and without torment, there is no “wound”. The solution lies with the League and Forza Italia. We thought it was a broad coalition, but it was just a sanatorium, a dab of iodine. If Schlein loses, the PD voter won’t vote for Conte, but if Conte loses, the M5S voter won’t vote for Schlein. Listen to Angelo Bonelli on the primaries to be avoided: “These primaries risk being divisive, riven, and decided by a single vote.” If Speranza proposes appointing a partisan or an 18-year-old as coalition leader, Bonelli responds with a tragic chapter of Italian history: “We could appoint the chair of the committees for the victims of the Piazza Fontana bombing or the Bologna massacre – a figure to highlight the scar left by this electoral law.” A marvellous quote is doing the rounds, attributed to an apocryphal Franceschini: “The primaries risk producing two losers. One will lose the primaries and the other the general election.” Prodi’s grand celebration has now turned into a long convalescence for the progressive.

Preface: everyone on the left is on holiday, but when a left-wing MP replies that he is on holiday, he has filled at least twenty typewritten pages, proposed an article to Rinascita, read the obituaries on page 46, re-read Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and phoned Gianni Cuperlo to suggest a seminar for the autumn. Former minister Enzo Amendola, from his retreat, recalls that the old Communist leader used to keep quiet in August: “That’s how it worked: at least in the days of L’Unità. Silence in August, long and prolonged reflection, and in September the secretary’s interview would be published, setting out the party line.” It is the Communist version of the adage by the great Giuseppe Sottile, the ‘Flaubert of Gangi’, who always warns: ‘The longer the thought, the bigger the load of rubbish’. Guerini is on the other side of the world, pondering the CIA chief’s trip to Moscow. The truth is that they don’t know how to make ‘those two’ – Conte and Schlein – understand that they need to step aside. How did Speranza’s interview with "Il Corriere" come about? We’ve gone beyond the ‘mastermind behind the mastermind’ that Ranucci imagines to oust him from Rai. The confession from within the PD ranks: ‘It’s all Bettini’s doing; he’s supposedly colluded with Franceschini. It’s a plot.’ As usual, the convoluted story. There is also the suggestion that Speranza gave the interview to launch Bersani. We call Conte Beach, home to the former president’s lieutenants. They explain from the bow: “The president puts the good of the project first. His sole ambition is to get rid of Meloni. That’s all. He has no personal ambitions” (he already sees himself as President of the Senate and then at the Quirinale). He’s making it clear that, of the two, he’s the “generous” one, and that in Liguria there’s the precedent of Andrea Orlando, who lost because the M5S – founded in opposition to the PD (nobody remembers that anymore) – decided not to help him out of generosity… How did Elly Schlein take Speranza’s ‘insightful’ reading of the interview – that of the lovable Bob Hope, the most endearing man in the world who, in effect, plunged the foam dagger? From the Schlein Maracaibo camp, they say that ‘the secretary deals with the issues that matter to Italians. Fuel’. Except that the primary issue is a volatile one. Having read the interview, Schlein promised: “In Reggio Emilia, at the Festa dell’Unità, I’ll be the one speaking,” and added: “Interviews about the primaries? They’re just intellectual exercises.”

And here we return to the wound, because as soon as you mention the primaries, they respond with anguish, as does Rome’s ‘acatapano’, Claudio Mancini: ‘The wound, the tear… It takes months to heal’. How can we sort out the primaries, the rules and the situation with Ukraine? The wise Bonelli asks: ‘And whoever loses, will they accept the result?’. It will end with a recount of the votes. The trouble is that, mathematically speaking, they’re actually destined to win. Guerini, with his abacus, reckons that “Forza Italia and the League together don’t even reach 13 per cent. That means that under the new law, we’ll win”. The gamble being taken by the PD’s Comintern – Orlando, Franceschini, Guerini and Speranza – is that the electoral law will be scrapped thanks to the League. If you have managed to follow this far, you are ready for the PD leadership’s big leap of faith, their gamble. Here is the reasoning: Zaia, Fontana, Fedriga and Romeo have an interest in keeping the old electoral law because, in the north, they can win all the single-member constituencies and so, in the end, the law won’t pass. If the law is rejected, it’s just as likely that Meloni will resign. With the law scrapped and the primaries off the table, the left will also be rid of the hassle. On the left, the night is always a thousand and one; it needs to be dragged out (to avoid the primaries). Incidentally, out on the street, in Via Frattina, we bump into Gigi Marzullo, the guardian of Italian nights on Rai: “I know a solution. It happened with Craxi and De Mita in 1983. They agreed on a handover. First one, then the other. Craxi led the first part and then…’. De Mita was supposed to take his place, but Craxi didn’t want to step down. Ask yourselves a question and answer it: what’s the best way to choose the left’s candidate? Just one. The dice.