Gabrielli joins forces with Ruffini: “Vannacci is proof of the government’s failure on security”

Franco Gabrielli is entering politics. “Yes, I’ve made up my mind,” he tells Aldo Cazzullo in an interview with the Corriere della Sera. The former Chief of Police, who later served as Undersecretary for Security in the Draghi government, will not be founding his own party: “I will be joining a project that is already underway: that of Ernesto Maria Ruffini”, namely Più Uno. He is doing so, he explains, “without asking for roles or guarantees”. “I could have waited for a government to be formed that might have entrusted me with some post. But that is not what interests me.”

Its political positioning is “unambiguously on the centre-left. We are not seeking a middle ground between right and left”. Gabrielli does not want a self-sufficient centre, “doomed to irrelevance”, but an alliance that is “broader, more credible and capable of governing”. He does not rule out any potential allies. On Renzi, he says: “If we were to draw up a retrospective ranking of reliability for each of them, we wouldn’t even manage to sit round a table”. As for Calenda, however, he leaves the door open without pulling him by the jacket: “It will be up to us to put together a proposal interesting enough to appeal to him as well”. The dialogue with Onorato is “useful”, but “inclusion does not mean bringing together everything and its opposite”.

On the subject of the primaries, Gabrielli calls for “the proper order of things” to be respected: first the programme, scope and common rules, then, if necessary, the selection of a leader. Otherwise, “it would be suicidal to organise the primaries as a head-to-head contest between parties”. Ruffini has indicated his willingness to stand, “but the candidacy must serve a wider project”.

The crux of the interview, however, is security – the field in which he has worked for thirty-eight years. And it is on the very same day that Renzi opens the Leopolda conference with De Luca to declare that the centre-left must go on the offensive on this issue. For Gabrielli, the general’s rise is an indictment of Palazzo Chigi: “Vannacci’s success is also proof of the government’s failure, particularly on the issues of immigration and security. Vannacci is saying today many of the same things that Giorgia Meloni used to say when she was in opposition.” Gabrielli points out that Italy remains one of the safest countries in terms of violent crime, but that street crime, such as robberies and pickpocketing, has increased. He warns that fears “should neither be fuelled nor denied: they must be understood and managed”. His approach combines territorial control with tackling the root causes, because “security is a police function; it is never merely a police problem”. On immigration, he proposes legal migration channels, fast-track procedures, effective repatriation and integration, with a single ministry or agency.

When asked about the secrets of a former Chief of Police, he replies curtly: the information “belongs to the state” and the dossiers “are not part of my institutional culture”. On Ukraine, the issue that most divides the broad political spectrum, he takes a clear stance: “I believe it is right to continue supporting Ukraine, including militarily, so that it can defend itself”. His condition for peace is that it must “stop the war, without rewarding aggression; otherwise, it simply paves the way for the next war”.