Salvini calls a party congress ahead of the major purge

Pontida, from our correspondent. A cemetery. He is preparing the tombs; he calls it a congress. This is the Pontida of ‘here lies’, of Salvini ‘in the shade of the cypresses and within the urns’. On the lawn – or rather, the small patch of grass – this sacred ground, he announces that he will convene the League’s extraordinary congress in October, and warns that those who lose it – “certain people without dignity” – “will never find their way back to our home”. It is a farce, yet another one, a congress decided by a show of hands, and even if it were true, Salvini holds the membership cards of this party where, like Foscolo, ‘and you, Hector, shall have the honour of tears’. For those who lose, there will be no rest, not even beneath the sky of Pontida. Even the clouds belong to Salvini, and planes fly overhead – for a fee – bearing banners reading ‘Come on, Secretary’. It is not the trumpet of democracy that Salvini sounds, but that of the seventh seal; it is the mass grave he promises to the journalists – “servants of the regime” – from *La Repubblica* and *Il Foglio*, that very *Il Foglio* from which he reads the article in front of the “people”: “Empty, empty, empty. Pontida is empty… This – and it is Salvini speaking – is what they wrote. If I were you, I’d be ashamed. Rinse your mouths out.” The governors and Attilio Fontana remain silent, whilst on stage Fontana promises: “I won’t keep quiet. I won’t stop. Nothing will stop me, and above all, no one will stop me.” Fate is already calling him: only a hidalgo like Fontana can challenge Salvini – the man of ‘zero purge’ – at the party congress.

According to Gianluca Savoini, Salvini’s adviser—his very own “Salvinov”—even Fontana will be mown down, with honour, alongside Zaia, Fedriga and Fugatti: “From tomorrow, Matteo will go ‘zap’. The governors are spineless. You’ll see. Zap.” The other figure for whom the political death knell is sounding is Romeo, the partisan Romy, who is cheered by the Lombards with chants of “Rom-e-o, Rom-e-o”, complete with green smoke bombs – another who, like Fontana, insists: “I won’t stop”. When the chorus of young people from Alzano, Bergamo and Brescia begins to grow louder, Salvini’s henchmen step in and shove them aside. There are, in effect, two Leagues: Cain and Abel, with the Abels torn to pieces by the black brigade—in black shirts—who set off from the south, with their buses paid for, their whistles paid for, their megaphones paid for, and their orders: “When Matteo takes the stage, start shouting ‘Matteo’; his name must drown out everyone else’s.” They are Claudio Durigon’s Cobas, his ‘milk quota’, and they march at his command, blow their whistles at his command, obey when Durigon calls for order and ‘Respect. We need respect’. The lawn has shrunk, even smaller than in 2025, with the marquee where battered and fried frogs are being cooked, the crowd almost jostling to get closer to the stage. In the Bossi years, and the early days of Salvini, it was a celebration, but now it’s a picnic of grudges, Salvini’s outdoor seating area. Where Miglio’s books once stood, there are now those by Armando Siri, the latest of which is titled "A tutto c'è un perché". The banner reading “No foreigners allowed”, put up by a foreign worker, also raises a smile. And what are we to make of Silvia Sardone, whom Salvini is fielding as a candidate for mayor of Milan – a woman who chases after Vannacci, who imagines the League as an ‘anti-Maranza’ alternative, whilst Zaia proposes: “Anyone fleeing hunger has the right to come to Italy”? What are we to make of it? The ‘elf’ is nowhere to be seen – that old League stalwart who used to bring a splash of colour to this Sunday every year – nor is there any sign of Gad Lerner’s crumpled linen, from the days when he was sent to Pontida and La Repubblica ran the headline “Erase Salvini”. He is so furious with the press that Salvini lays claim to that old title, yet omits to mention that it is the ballot box that will erase him – that Vannacci who, according to Riccardo Molinari, the group leader in the Chamber of Deputies, has “soiled the lawn” and whose programme seems to have been written “in the beer halls of Munich in the 1920s”. Who took him in, who appointed him deputy secretary of the League? They’ve reached the point where Vannacci mocks them and blows them kisses from Orvieto, even saying: “I’ve done you a favour; remember, nothing grows from diamonds, but flowers grow from manure.” Federico Freni quietly goes about his business, blending into the crowd to sell sandwiches and pour beer, just like any party activist, as he does every year, and Tiziana Nisini, the Tuscan MP, who is wearing a Bossi T-shirt. The truest words are spoken by Calderoli, ‘Il Calde’: “I’m furious as hell because there’s no point in applauding Bossi when, yesterday afternoon, in church, there were only four of us there to remember him.” There were four of them, and Salvini—who exploits Bossi’s name, citing him to kick off the great ‘zero purge’—wasn’t there. There are four of them: four regional governors—Fontana, Fedriga, Zaia and Fugatti—and they’re moving in unison, taking to the main lawn, posing for photos together, so much so that Fontana suggests, “We’re the Four Musketeers.” He has the charm of the reckless, and even this farcical congress, this move by Salvini, is ultimately the work of Fontana, of his outbursts, of his stubborn dissent. He confides in me: “I’m of a certain age and I feel entitled to say what I think.” Zaia is different. He has found his ‘Barn’ and is so skilful that when the crowd cheers “secretary, secretary”, he replies to the journalists: “They’re addressing Salvini.” He wants a liberal Lega, but he will not find it in this Duma-like party, and he has no intention of taking the lead among the Morellis, the Tiziano Terzani-types in Ceuta. Months have passed and in Veneto they are trying to make people forget him, without success, just like in the film Dimenticare Palermo. Every year Zaia’s giant banner would be unfurled, but this year Alberto Stefani has made another one – yet another. Two. Wasn’t Zaia’s enough? It is Giorgetti who, speaking of Cain and Abel, points out that ‘Brothers on Free Soil’ means brothers – not Cain and Abel, but a people who have sworn to stand together. Freedom is not the freedom to cause a ruckus.” But to state that Salvini’s political line is a failure, to reproach him for that General Feccia – with whom he might one day go to Meloni to propose an alliance (“are you sure Salvini and Vannacci don’t speak to each other?”) – is that a ruckus or the truth?

Romeo says that last year, “when nobody challenged Salvini at the party conference, a huge mistake was made; we won’t make that mistake. If there is a proper party conference, someone will stand against him”. Few realise that Salvini is talking about a “show of hands” party conference. This means that votes are cast on motions by the very delegates he himself has elected. At most, a minority motion might be tabled, as in the days of Gianni Fava, Salvini’s old challenger at the party congress. That 2017 congress was more of a genuine one than the one being prepared for October. For at least ten years, Salvini has been amending the party constitution and cramming his own people – around 450 of them – into the mini-parliament tasked with electing the secretary. It would be more accurate to say that the Lega’s extraordinary congress will not elect Salvini but Durigon. It is he, together with Denis Verdini and his daughter Francesca, who runs the Lega’s ‘Pentagon’. It is Durigon who holds the votes and the delegates from the south, who now choose the secretary of the former Northern League. There is one phrase from Durigon that is worth more than all the articles that will be written: ‘Romeo addà paga’, and even the senators answer to Durigon, so much so that when Romeo takes the floor, they look at one another and seek out Durigon to ask him: ‘Claudio, do you want us to throw him off the stage?’ Salvini’s League is not the PD, which enjoys holding party congresses; in the League, a congress serves only to give the green light to the executioner, to legitimise the ousting, just a few months before the elections. It is Salvini who foreshadows the fate awaiting the rebels: “The first out-of-place voice will not harm me, but it damages the voice of the activists throughout Italy. I don’t want to waste time, and I don’t want to hand the microphone over to anyone who insults the League and drags it through the mud.” It’s a way of showing them the back door. But what of the dialogue, the road map, the manifesto he’d been promising for months? He’s led them all the way to Moscow, just as the Tsar did with the French. Every week he lured them closer with the aim of making them fall into his trap, to die of cold, in the darkness. To them the tombs, to Salvini the dacha.