Salvini is a byline. He is phoning MEPs and boycotting Garavaglia’s candidacy, who is not giving up

What a grand gesture this would be, this fine gesture from Salvini? “Dear Garavaglia, I’ll get you the signatures myself”. The League has finally found its own Massimo Decimo Garavaglia. It is Garavaglia who has decided to challenge Salvini at the extraordinary congress. Garavaglia is now just five signatures short. They’re giving him a run for his money. Salvini is personally collecting them amongst MEPs. Can a captain really be afraid of a gladiator wielding a Bic pen instead of a sword?

If Salvini wants to come across as a giant and turn this extraordinary congress – taking place in Milan on Saturday and Sunday – into the Lega’s grand celebration, he has no choice but to take this noble step. According to the party’s constitution, 80 signatures are required to stand as a candidate and challenge Salvini. Needless to say, all Salvini needs to do is ring the MPs and remind them: ‘Mind you, if you sign for Garavaglia, you won’t be returning to Parliament in the next term.’ It goes without saying that the Lega will lose a large proportion of its senators and MPs. Perhaps 20 will survive in the Chamber of Deputies, and even fewer in the Senate. We wish him the very best, but we must also say that this is the moment for courage.

At first, when Garavaglia announced his candidacy to Il Foglio as a bit of a joke, everyone in the League smiled. Days passed and the mood changed. The initial reaction from Salvini’s supporters was one of derision: “Where on earth is he going?”. Garavaglia has not lost heart, like Cervantes’ hero, and continues to seek signatures even against the windmills, in the finest tradition of a hidalgo. There were thirty signatures, then forty, and now there are 75. He is a stone’s throw from the finish line and tells those cheering him on: “I won’t give up; I’m confident.” He is like those Italians, in the mould of De Gasperi, who feel the weight of swimming against the tide because, as De Gasperi would say, “I feel that everything, except your personal courtesy, is against me”. He is up against a system that, over the years, has taken the form of Salvini.

The delegates expected to back Garavaglia owe nothing but gratitude to a leader who has many faults, including that of having worked miracles for ungrateful people – DJs with neither talent nor substance. Garavaglia’s task is twice as difficult. In the Senate, he must face off against Andrea Paganella, now a senator but formerly Salvini’s chief of staff, a man who is collecting signatures on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister. Another individual collecting signatures is, of course, Claudio Durigon, the Lega’s chief secretary. That is normal – more than normal, in fact. What is unprecedented, however – and this is certainly true – is that a leader busy fighting the ‘Maranza’ protests, the lorry drivers’ strike and high diesel prices should have the time to ring Brussels and personally ask MEPs to sign in his favour.

Garavaglia has no posts to promise or take away from wives and husbands. Salvini has the weapon of re-election on his side. We have already written that the final figures are in Salvini’s favour, so why obstruct and intimidate to ensure Garavaglia fails to secure the necessary signatures? Is Salvini afraid of Garavaglia or of a secret ballot? Without another candidate, a formal vote is unnecessary; a show of hands will suffice, as happened two days ago at the PD assembly, where Bonaccini opened and closed the voting. Those who saw him assure us: Bonaccini looked like the traffic warden in Piazza Venezia shouting, ‘Come on, hurry up!’ So, if Milan ends up without a candidate, it’ll be the same old farce as we saw a year ago in Florence, with all those ungrateful souls shouting ‘Matteo, Matteo’, and then whispering in your ear: ‘We’ll plummet to three per cent. It’s over; the League is finished.’

It was Garavaglia who turned a sham party conference into a real one. Salvini – and let’s believe him – wants it to be ‘real’; he keeps repeating that ‘it must be a celebration’. The signatures mustn’t be allowed to spoil it. The PD even changed its constitution to facilitate Schlein’s participation in the primaries. Here, all it takes is five signatures and the guarantee that voting will be by secret ballot. The decision to bring forward the party conference was a shrewd manoeuvre by Salvini. Yet the masterstroke—the true greatness of the strong lies in generosity. In nineteenth-century novels, the true romantics, the charismatic leaders, those who feared not their fate, would allow their rival to choose the weapon for the duel. Here, a Bic pen will suffice. Let Salvini provide the signatures Garavaglia is missing. He might lose twenty delegates, even twenty votes, but this noble gesture would be multiplied a hundredfold even by those who insult him, by those who call him a ‘Papeetino’. Garavaglia is five signatures short of standing for election, and Salvini needs just five more to earn the true title of secretary.