Salvini the bully: in Pontida he stands firm against Fontana, Zaia and Romeo: “The League is united. I am the secretary.” The primaries marred by boos

From Pontida. The situation is tense. The event resembles alcohol-free beer: a Pontida gathering lacking in spirit, with Salvini threatening, accusing and reminding the rebellious governors, Max Romeo and the partisan Romy: ‘I am the secretary’. He will allow them to speak on stage—Romeo, Zaia, Attilio Fontana and the ‘hidalgo’ will have their say—but only so they can be booed, and he has already warned them in a meeting held this afternoon: ‘I don’t want any associations; I don’t want a split Lega. No.’ On stage, he says: ‘The Lega is one party for the north and south, and Pontida will be a festival for the people. Fewer bankers and more workers.’

He acts like a bully and remains firmly entrenched in the secretariat because, as Roberto Calderoli points out: “We elected him secretary for four years”. This has been the case for two terms of the Lega and is no longer news, but it is Meloni’s next source of despair, as she now has an ally with a support base of perhaps three or four per cent.

One Lega is in church commemorating Bossi – the old Lega of Leoni, Calderoli himself and Romeo (with Susanna Ceccardi joining them) – whilst the other remains here munching on battered fried frogs, shouting ‘remigration’, though Vannacci shouts it better. The mood is somber, with Salvini measuring the space like a surveyor. He takes the stage alongside Maurizio Bosatra, the League’s logistics chief—another silent monument—and remarks, “We’re getting a bit cramped here.” The ‘sacred lawn’ is a tiny patch of grass, halved in size, which could be filled by a single Trenord carriage, and the loudspeakers, along with the banners reading ‘No foreigners allowed here’, are being set up by a Black worker. Remigration or a minimum wage?

Last year General Vannacci was being hailed, and today Romeo – Romy – remains the last hope, telling journalists: “It will be the people who decide.” Who are you booing? Even the young people are divided. Young people from Lombardy are hurling abuse at those from Lazio: “The thieves have arrived”, whilst those from Lazio retort: “Who did you call a thief?”. Two years ago, Tajani was booed with chants of “Tajani, f*** off”, but now the enemy is Ranucci – the ultimate satire – with the giant banner reading “Ranucci, why don’t you ‘Report’ your friends at home?”.

The youth party—the event that kicks off Pontida, and which used to be a night of student revelry—has been reduced to an Erasmus-style dinner. Last year they were cursing Allah; this year they’re cursing bad luck and the newspapers. Luca Toccalini, the youth secretary, who is 36, announces that the party congress will take place at the end of October. He is leaving—and he is definitely out—but he takes his revenge on Romeo: “Enough of this rubbish.” One down. It is really coming to an end, and you can tell from the T-shirts. They have gone back to Bossi’s line about segregated Indians: “They’ve suffered immigration; now they live on reservations. Think about it.” Only the Ligurians still feel like joking about Lega-branded condoms and Claudio Durigon, the acting secretary, who quips: “We punctured them to boost the birth rate.” It’s all stale; Salvini is stale, and so is his usual accusation: “Journalists write rubbish”, his venom, always directed at journalists: “You’re all just windbags”. He loves only Morelli, his Morelli, the Tiziano Terzani who travels to Ceuta and Saxony. You only have to go out onto the street to see that a phrase – “Salvini, m…” – has been scrawled over. There’s a photo. Windbags, who?

Things have changed, and so have these young people, who – unlike the Gd – have not yet deserted the cause. There are even some promising ones, such as Giada Ferrari, who mocks the left with this quip: ‘The only thing red is Lambrusco’. But there are fewer and fewer of them, and they now keep repeating ‘we mustn’t give up’, so as not to admit that they have already given up. Romeo, who would never have imagined playing the role of anti-leader, has a group of young people from Alzano who vow: “If they boo Romeo, we’ll boo Salvini”. Only one has the courage to approach the stage and advise Salvini: “Matteo, it’s time for a change”. Once they were all about secession; now they’ve been reduced to a contest over who can boo the loudest, in these short-lived primaries. Igor Iezzi, who has seen it all in the League over the past thirty years, isn’t afraid of ‘three per cent. I was there when we were at three per cent.’ They’re falling in the polls, their numbers are dwindling, they’re sinking like the night in Pontida. They dream of brooms and eat fried frogs