The Lega congress is a celebratory parade for Salvini, a trial for Romeo. Durigon is acting as secretary.

Milan. Two candidates, Salvini and Garavaglia, with the secretary, Claudio Durigon, making up the third. It is clear from the outset that Durigon will be elected secretary of the Lega. This is not a joke. The Lega’s extraordinary congress, held in this Milan under lockdown for fear of the Maranza, will be won by this former trade unionist who says “I am anti-trade unionist”, and who announces on stage to Luca Zaia: “You must put yourself forward, dear Luca: I am sure Matteo will ask you to join the political secretariat”. The first secretary, Salvini, will serve as deputy to his own deputy, Durigon, while the congress is under such tight security it might as well be a G7 summit or Kim’s North Korea. Journalists are escorted into the hall by the hand, like OSCE observers, and we must even thank the Lega’s communications team, which, in its mercy, managed to convince Salvini that we ought at least to let the journalists have a little tour: Daddy Salvini, will you treat us to an ice lolly?

It is a trial against Romeo, the partisan known as ‘Romy’, who is under attack from this Friulian regional secretary, Marco Dreosto, and from Andrea Crippa, who serves as the Lega’s commissioner in Tuscany – a man from Brianza based in Florence – and then there is Garavaglia, the most noble of the noble, ‘Sgara’, who has nothing but his fine ideas, his pride, and that Giorgetti, who is too big a figure to be purged, even for Salvini. Elio Fagioli, the Lega’s long-standing activist, who still has an eye for ‘the pretty girls’, says that ‘Giorgetti – I’ve known him all my life – will vote for Garavaglia one hundred per cent’. This Mico sports hall, in the City Life area, is reminiscent of Brutalist architecture: concrete and more concrete. Some one thousand Lega members have been brought in by Salvini, who is eager to proceed. Garavaglia, nicknamed "Garavaglietti", is effectively playing away from home and even faces an unfavourable lineup. The regional secretaries and field marshals take the floor, and the remarks amount to a steady stream of "thank you, Matteo", as if he were the mother who gave birth to them. Or perhaps he is.

Do you know why Garavaglia is free, why Attilio Fontana is free, why Giorgetti is free – even to sit next to Salvini and think to himself that they’re taking that long-held dream away from him? And that all these ‘punkofasci’ – whom Bossi (who wasn’t right-wing) would have kicked up the arse – are taking it away from him? They are free because they have a trade; because if things go wrong, they will find a job. But could these young men—whom Salvini has miraculously saved and who, even before they were thirty, were already drinking in Rome as MPs—find work? Without Salvini, they would be part of the unemployed workforce, living on welfare, four League members hanging about in a pub. They are the most hostile towards Romeo, whose only ‘crime’ was to write a book – so much so that he has to say: “But are Sardone, Zaia and Fedriga the only ones allowed to write books? What have I done wrong?” And then, again: “The problem is the people who no longer join the League, the people who no longer vote for us. We’ve only asked to be heard. I’m being boycotted after 35 years in the League.” It sounds like a eulogy. Romeo says that every time he presents his book, calls go out to party members: “Don’t go.” Just think: they say paper is tired, but a book, even now, still causes arguments; a book is frightening. One could write a book about this Lega, the oldest remaining party, about this community (by now we all know one another, party members and journalists alike); and if Salvini were not such a brutalist, if he were not that hotchpotch of racist, far-right theories, one might even praise him for the patience with which he listens to the speeches of party members.

Garavaglia’s supporters, of course, are chatting around aperitif time. We spot Zaia embracing Durigon and Marti, the same Zaia who explains how it works: “I govern and you represent the south”. It is Zaia who says: “The League cannot be anti-freedom”, and even Riccardo Molinari, who votes for Salvini, recalls: “I have always been opposed to the shift to the right”No sooner has he finished speaking than MEP Isabella Tovaglieri shouts: “Remigration, remigration”. They have only three ideas, and two of them they’ve inherited from a dead man: Bossi. One is autonomy, the other was the North, and the third is remigration. Even in this respect, old Bossi was more original: “fora di ball”. Claudio Borghi is preferable – at least he’s imaginative, reads books and loves art – compared to this motley crew that Salvini drags along behind him. One of them, a certain Matteo Rancan, says, addressing Garavaglia and Romeo: “If Bossi were here, these lot wouldn’t be here today.” It is equally plausible that, had Bossi not been undermined by those closest to him, Rancan would never have emerged. We continue to report, and in the background we still hear ‘thanks, Matteo’ (they will even place his holy card in their cars). The MPs look at one another and are already thinking: ‘Will he save me? Will I be on the list?’ Apocryphal lists of those who’ve been sidelined and those who’ve been saved are doing the rounds. I ask Ostellari, Nordio’s undersecretary: will he be saved, or will you too, as they say, be left out? And Ostellari, who does have a job, says: ‘We’ll see; I don’t read these lists’. Only one thing unites them: the newspapers they consider hostile, the newspapers one must not speak to. If he were really that good, if Salvini had listened to everyone, no League member would dare say: ‘Listen to us’. It took five years to get Romeo to open up, to make him say words that are nothing more than pinches, nothing more, far from ‘factionalism’It took desperation – that Vannacci whom Salvini paraded about like the fercolo of Saint Agatha – to make Attilio Fontana say: “As if we’d ever go along with Vannacci’s nonsense.” It took a desperate League to get Garavaglia to stand as a candidate. There’s only one piece of news. Tomorrow there will be a new secretary of the League. His name is Durigon.