Better to kick the bucket than to back Salvini

He sends his close friend, Alessandro Morelli, to Ceuta with a camera and microphone to report on Spain’s downfall, as if he were Sergio Zavoli on a bulldozer, paying no heed to the fact that he is an undersecretary and that in doing so he is also exposing the government; then he pushes his electoral desperation to the point of a row with Tajani – “I’m not talking about him, but there’s an anti-Russian anxiety that worries me” – and finally, amongst his own ranks, he returns to talking about the Ministry of the Interior as the only path to salvation and personal revival. The more Matteo Salvini flounders, hounded by falling poll ratings and rebellious lieutenants, the more he resorts to any ploy to turn things round and become a carbon copy of Vannacci – who is himself a carbon copy of the Salvini of yesteryear – the more the Deputy Prime Minister ends up resembling Robert De Niro in the finale of Raging Bull, when, after the fight, he ends up bleeding to death in the loo. So now a recently coined maxim is doing the rounds in the corridors of Palazzo Chigi, as brief as a Latin maxim and as blunt as a barracks joke. ‘Better to kick the bucket than to put up with Salvini.’ And for the first time in the history of the Republic, the early dissolution of Parliament is being presented as a gesture of affection, almost a caress on the forehead for a poor madman who, even so, once had his moments of grandeur.

“Meglio tirare le cuoia che tirare Salvini”, the leader of a party which, with a foresight that borders on the sinister, has named itself after a cart – or rather, a Carroccio. Who coined the phrase is unknown, but it is already being passed down by word of mouth like peasant proverbs about the weather, the sort that predict snow by observing the movement of ants. For the matter, explain the soothsayers on the main floor with the sombre faces of those who have already peered into the beast’s liver, is no longer political but agronomic. The ally is not recovering; on the contrary: the worse he feels, the more agitated he becomes and the more his condition deteriorates. We have watered it, fertilised it, moved it into the sun, and spoken to it in the soft, slightly foolish tone reserved for dying succulents, yet to no avail—it continues to shed leaves in the exact same spot on the carpet. Never mind Vannacci, whom Meloni insists she does not currently want in the coalition—as one minister puts it: “‘We’d have to give him 8 per cent of the seats based on a poll; we might as well hand him the keys to the house’ – the problem is Salvini. ‘If it were up to me, I’d vote right away,’ the president is reported to have said; she doesn’t want to play a game that erodes what little charisma she has left and turns the ‘miracle government’ (which tomorrow will become the longest-serving in the history of the Republic) into a den of iniquity. All signs point to a difficult year ahead for Meloni, fraught with revenge, spite, settling of scores, fireworks and all manner of commotion. But on closer inspection, there is no sign of despair at the Palace.

If anything, there is a cheerful acceptance of passing away, a funereal optimism, the serenity of someone who has examined all available options and concluded that death remains the most dignified. Because scraping by is an art that requires decent resources and bearable company, whilst dragging along for a whole year an ally who chases his own shadow costs more effort than dying on schedule. We scrape by, we drag the cart along, we drag things out, we tally the figures when there’s nothing left to add up, and in the end we kick the bucket. The only one still begging for another year is precisely the one for whom time has become a danger. Salvini is asking for months to recoup what he is losing, without realising that it is precisely those months that are the very source of the loss, and that his Raging Bull-style strategy bolsters Vannacci whilst weakening the government, the League and the entire centre-right. He does the only thing he knows how to do when the temperature rises, which is to up the ante. And since it is never enough, he turns it up yet further: he visits Tor Bella Monaca, the Roman suburb plagued by drugs and social deprivation; he sends undersecretaries to film tent cities in Spain; he rejects the run-off provision in the electoral law; he resents Vannacci, who has been accused by the Financial Times of being Putin’s pawn – and so it would not take much for him to start speaking Russian. ‘Thus he, unaware of the blow, / was fighting and was slain,’ says the poet.

Meloni, on the other hand, observes 11 April with the fixed gaze of an entomologist, and sees a clean spring, the ballot box detached from the local elections, the risk contained, the parliamentary term drawing to a close whilst it may still be presentable. Enduring is a delicate exercise, requiring fresh air, contained expenditure and a partner in at least decent condition, whilst dragging along for another twelve months an ally who chases after his own electorate every morning through the provincial streets is a running cost that no record of longevity can ever recoup.