Salvini’s words: he promises alliances, but wants to carry out a purge after Pontida

Everything is back on the table in the League: end-of-life care is not just a law, but the horizon. The decisive meeting fails to reach a decision. Promises are made. Promises are made of a ‘Northern Alliance’, which means everything and nothing. Salvini wants to survive and the regional governors are waiting for the voters to pull the plug. The episode is likely to conclude with Massimiliano Romeo exiled to Colono like Oedipus, while Attilio Fontana continues on, like a hidalgo. The outcome appears to be a form of assisted electoral suicide. He summons Fontana, Zaia, Fedriga and Fugatti to his home in Rome and plays the role of Salvini he does best: he makes empty promises, appears contrite, even generous: “We’ll innovate together. We’ll share the same line.” He tells them that after Pontida the secretariat can be expanded; he promises – as if he were Elly Schlein – a ‘road map’, a word which, just hearing it, should send well-meaning League members fleeing. He even sells them ‘a policy manifesto’. He bamboozles them for hours, drags things out a bit further, as he’s been doing for three years, because the real Salvini is the one who, the moment they turn their backs, guarantees: “After Pontida, I’ll draw a line under it.” First off, he’ll get rid of Romeo, that “O Romeo”, poor Romeo. A joke is making the rounds—a stunning one—and it is certainly worth more than the notes Salvini puts together. It comes from the Lega Frisella, the group made up of southern MPs, Marti and Zinzi, led by Claudio Durigon—a man who shapes his own future by summoning Descalzi and Cattaneo to Rome, to the Officine Farneto, as if they were his next-door neighbours. They were discussing Romeo and hinted, “Romeo’s going to have to pay.” Do you know how Romeo, the Senate group leader, receives his orders from Salvini? Through Andrea Paganella, the former chief of staff, now a senator. Salvini has not spoken to him for months and does not even answer his phone calls. He will also take away the Lombardy branch of the League, of which Romeo is secretary, but only after Pontida, the birthday photo in which everyone will have to smile, or rather, as they say in the League, “in a spirit of maximum cooperation”.

Romeo tells his fellow PD senators: “These days there are two kinds of courage: one for running away and one for fleeing.” Every time Fontana meets Salvini alongside Zaia, Fedriga and Fugatti, he looks around and asks himself: “Come on, speak up. Let’s challenge him.” However, Zaia, who chairs the Veneto Regional Council, calculates that rather than confronting the Morellis—Salvini’s puppets—it is wiser to remain in Treviso and keep the administrative wheels turning. Fedriga, still in government, reasons that rather than being cast as Salvini’s Brutus—a role that has in fact enhanced his profile—it is better to remain mayor of Trieste. Few realised it, but they did realise that a certain Matteo Salvini was joining the Lega’s federal meeting remotely, and they wondered: but if Salvini is in the room, who’s joining in his place? And those few who did realise it replied: if it’s not him, it can only be the person dearest to him. Every Monday, within the League, members examine the poll published by Mentana, and each time the party’s support declines, those who wish to turn the page hope: ‘Come on, let’s drop a bit more. Maybe something will happen.’ Fontana will go his own way; Zaia has at least three other options; Fedriga was born in a border town and has no nostalgia for Rome; Giorgetti, when he is in a joking mood – and he often is – says: “If things go badly, I’ll go to Goldman Sachs.” The bill will be footed by the elderly owner of the warehouse in Lodi, the League supporter who no longer wants to see Europe’s ‘punkofasci’ – now bloated with self-importance – in Pontida and applaud them. If things go badly, Salvini stays; if they go well, his partner will succeed him.