Conte’s ‘subject to agreement’ on Ukraine: the deal on the left will be hammered out in legal jargon

“Let me remind you that Conte voted four times in favour of sending arms to Ukraine whilst Draghi was in office.” Seated in a small Senate armchair is Marco Rizzo, who has graced every stage of Italian communism, observing the comings and goings of MPs from the PD, AVS, Italia Viva and the M5S with the wry smile of a gallery-goer who knows the opera by heart. They joke, nudge one another, and exchange the question of the day with the conspiratorial glee of schoolchildren on the eve of a school trip: “Which resolution are you voting for?”, because there’s one for every party in the broad coalition – and indeed, on closer inspection, some might even vote for two. Ukraine yes, Ukraine no, Ukraine who knows. Rizzo listens to them, then delivers his verdict with the certainty of a seasoned observer. “When the time comes, they’ll find a way – a codicil, a loophole, a lexical trick.” It is the most accurate prophecy of the day, and it is uttered by the very man least inclined to wish the broad coalition any luck. When the time comes, they will indeed find a way, and it will take the form of an arabesque – that ornament which Islamic art cultivated partly to comply with religious aversion to figurative representation.

So yesterday the centre-left split, yet again, and in response to Giorgia Meloni’s statements ahead of the European Council, it tabled four irreconcilable motions on arms for Ukraine and, ultimately, on the meaning of the words ‘peace’ and ‘security’. “In opposition, we can afford to have four resolutions, but if we were to form a government, we would have to draft just one,” says Walter Verini, a reformist senator from the PD. It is possible to govern Italy without agreeing on almost anything, but not without knowing which side you are on in a war. In the Garibaldi Hall, the Senate’s main passageway, Matteo Renzi nevertheless repeats to reporters what he has just said in the Chamber. “Ukraine is not the problem.”

Then he pauses, letting the sentence settle on the notebooks, his gaze sweeping over the faces around him as if to make sure everyone has understood, and he winks. In that wink lies the rest of his speech, the name he does not utter. The problem is Giuseppe Conte, who is both the obstacle and the solution to the broad coalition, and who, when the time comes, will find an agreement on Ukraine, because no one masters the art of nuance more than he does – that extremely subtle casuistry which Pascal reproached the Jesuits for in Les Provinciales, capable of reconciling any principle with any expediency provided one knows where to insert the caveat. After all, Conte is the man of ‘reserving judgement’ and ‘subject to agreement’ – the formula by which, between 2018 and 2021, his governments regularly approved decrees that were still to be agreed upon, and which would be enough on its own to secure him a place in the history of the Italian language, were it not for the rest.

In May 2018, the coalition agreement with the Lega stated that “it would be appropriate to lift the sanctions imposed on Russia”, and from June onwards, at every European Council meeting – held every six months – Conte voted in favour of and renewed those sanctions. It was merely the first in a long series of U-turns, all carried out with the same lexical – and even, where necessary, arithmetic – ingenuity. It was Conte, as Prime Minister, who set the deficit at 2.4 per cent, defending that figure for weeks as a banner planted in Brussels’ face, until, in December 2018, following negotiations with the Commission, the 2.4 became 2.04, and Conte went to the Senate to explain that the cut altered neither the content nor the beneficiaries nor the timing of the budget. All it took was a zero slipped in after the decimal point to turn the defiance into an agreement.

As Prime Minister of a government formed with the Lega, he brought Salvini’s security decrees before the Council of Ministers; and as Prime Minister of a government formed with the PD, in October 2020, he amended them, without changing either his seat or his briefcase. And when the Morandi Bridge collapsed in August 2018, the government promised to revoke the Benettons’ motorway concession. Two years later, in July 2020, instead of revocation, a settlement was reached with the company, and the statement from Palazzo Chigi specified, with exquisite caution, that this was ‘without prejudice to the fact that the waiver of revocation may only take place upon completion of the settlement agreement’ – in other words, that the revocation remained in force at the very moment it was waived. One can only imagine what such a ‘virtuous’ figure might do with a single word, ‘weapons’, which in his vocabulary could still become – let us imagine – ‘technical assistance’, ‘dual-use goods’ or, in the boldest version, ‘financial support’ that the Ukrainians will spend as they see fit.

Yesterday’s four resolutions will be remembered for what they are: the last opportunity for everyone to campaign before the day of synthesis arrives. On that day, there will be a single text, signed by all and interpreted by each in their own way, and the wall of the broad coalition’s joint programme will be covered by such a dense arabesque that no one – not even Marco Rizzo from his gallery – will be able to make out the outline of a weapon for Ukraine. They will see only a tangle, which in the dictionary is also known as a deception.