The spirit of Pontida in Bossi’s collection of speeches

One can almost sense it, the spirit of Pontida, in the corridors of the Chamber of Deputies, evoked by the Minister for the Economy, Giancarlo Giorgetti, at the presentation of the book "Discorsi politici e parlamentari di Umberto Bossi", six months after the death of the founder of the Northern League, on a day when the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, was unable to attend (reportedly held up by a board meeting). The spirit of Pontida lingers once again on the very day news broke of the arrest of Riccardo Bossi, Umberto’s eldest son (Renzo and Sirio Bossi, sons from his second marriage, are present in the room, but Renzo’s comment is laconic and to the point: “Everyone pays for their own choices”). Nevertheless, the atmosphere is one of affectionate emotion – and at one point the spirit of the ‘pratone’ almost seems to bestow a blessing even upon Bruno Vespa, who moderates the meeting in heroic fashion, with his now-famous arm around his neck following his fall, and recalling how the League’s original members – initially sceptical of him, seeing him as ‘part of the Roman furniture’ – came to like him after seeing him arrive in Bossi’s car (he was later ‘dramatically’ interviewed by Vespa during the difficult days of the fall of the first Berlusconi government). Alongside the Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Lorenzo Fontana – who wrote the introduction – and Giorgetti, who faces not only the imminent budget bill but also the issue of Northern League members and some rather unfavourable opinion polls, three key figures from the eras shaped by Bossi at the helm of the League and in government appear, but always (metaphorically and otherwise) wearing the famous vest in which he used to be photographed even in front of Silvio Berlusconi’s villa on the Costa Smeralda, causing the Cavaliere to jump, as his adversary-turned-ally Pierferdinando Casini will recall, in the name of a substantial and iconic contrast to ‘Thieving Rome’, which he had hammered away at and traversed as a leader. All three are here, the co-protagonists of Bossi’s era: Casini and the other adversary-ally, Gianfranco Fini, and then Giulio Tremonti, a former minister and friend who, on the day of Umberto’s death, whilst abroad, could only submit to the Corriere della Sera, as he recounts, an obituary that referenced the ‘Va’ pensiero’, a fundamental element of what Fini calls the Bossi ‘liturgy’. On this occasion, it is the spirit of the ampoule that descends upon those present, while Fontana thanks Bossi for having given that North of yesteryear ‘a dream and a hope’, and while Casini, in an ‘Amarcord’-style recollection, recalls how he had managed to defuse Umberto – who had always called him ‘Carugnit de l’uratori’ – from the mad idea of presenting himself before Pope Wojtyła dressed entirely in green (in the end, Bossi turned up in a dark suit, Casini recounts, but couldn’t resist the temptation to say to the pontiff, ‘Your Holiness, we are the same: you are Polish and I am Lombard’). “And it was always the spirit of Pontida that meant Fontana, as Fontana recounts, met his southern girlfriend (later his wife) on 19 September – that is, on Umberto’s birthday and the feast day of Saint Januarius (how could it not have been fate?).”

“Everything I’ve learnt about politics was taught to me by Umberto,” recalls Giorgetti, so that non-purist members of the League might understand: Umberto’s way of not letting himself be tainted by the corridors of power – to the extent that he doesn’t even read the newspapers – must serve as a guiding light; this is the concept that has been with the minister ever since the day when, as a young man and activist, he was “picked out of the pack for unfathomable reasons”, he says (the urgent message had arrived at dawn, and his mother had had to wake him up and practically lift him out of bed: ‘Oi, get up, they want to put you forward as a candidate.’ Bossi spoke through his actions, says Giorgetti, to his movement made up of ‘earth’ and ‘roots’ – a school of politics and life. So much for any ‘Putin-style’ influence on the League. The point is: Bossi was not intimidated by Putin, a friend of B). Bossi often responded in a ‘rough and provocative’ manner, to the ‘turbulence of the times’ before and after Tangentopoli, says Casini, Bossi’s adversary and ally like Fini — who wouldn’t even say hello to Bossi, but who had always managed to see eye to eye with him to the point of giving the immigration law a shared name (‘it brought 634,000 migrant workers out of the informal economy’, says Fini to the ‘forgetful left’ of those days). Finally, as Tremonti speaks, recalling some key measures that form a bridge to the present day, it is the ‘Va pensiero’ that one seems to hear.