Meloni amidst weapons, rags and muggings. Lega-Crosetto row: “It’s shameful not to help”. Salvini rocks Tajani’s world

Weapons, rags and muggings. The best thing the right can do today is to vote. There’s a row over Ukraine, and in Parliament, Salvini is poaching MPs from Tajani. Giorgetti’s refusal to sign the Ukraine decree was merely a pretext to stage a spectacle featuring Lega member Claudio Borghi at Copasir. It is 3.30 pm when the Committee meets to outline the latest aid package for Kyiv. Borghi takes the floor and attacks Guido Crosetto. He says he is speaking ‘on behalf of the party. And my party is against aid for Kyiv’. Crosetto replies that he is “ashamed” of those who do not want to help Ukraine, adding that “defence is like an insurance policy” and that we cannot “be the only ones not to contribute”. Crosetto asks Borghi whether perhaps the Ukrainian resistance is causing him annoyance. Marco Pellegrini, of the M5S, sides with the League member, just as in the old days when Conte and Salvini were passing security decrees. Do you want to know why Giorgetti hasn’t signed and what Tajani’s ill-advised remark – that “we’ve already signed the decree”, uttered on Monday evening on Vespa’s programme – has led to? Says Stefano Candiani, a League member with a penchant for the truth: “Giorgetti is in bed in Varese with a hernia and can’t get up. It’s clear he’ll sign it as soon as he’s well enough.” How many weeks can a government last with Salvini regarding Tajani as ‘a peacock’, and Meloni thinking of Tajani and Salvini: ‘Are these the allies we’ve got?’

Salvini and Tajani are poaching each other’s members: Senator Francesco Silvestro has moved from Forza Italia (FI) to the League, and Fabrizio Sala, another former FI member now sitting as an independent, is reportedly set to follow suit. Two others from Forza Italia are considering following suit: Pino Bicchielli and Annarita Patriarca. Raffaele De Rosa, also from Forza Italia, left the party yesterday and has sought refuge with Cateno De Luca. Meloni has been forced to intervene with a phone call to Giorgetti and a statement whilst visiting Bologna: “There is no question of a failure to sign”. Giorgetti is expected in Rome this afternoon, health permitting, and will read out the decree; thus, as government sources explain, “a saga that would never even have begun if Tajani had kept quiet will come to an end”. It is reported that Meloni is confiding to her aides: “I can’t wait for this to be over”.

We must return to this Copasir meeting and state, once and for all, that there are two parties that see eye to eye: the Lega and the M5S. We must also ask ourselves: is the Lega still compatible with Meloni’s worldview? The FdI leader, Giovanni Donzelli—who is shrewd and sits on Copasir—shifts the right-wing turmoil onto the left, turning the division on its head: because it seems to me that within the broader coalition you are always divided. A technical meeting of a committee, a classified list of weapons, is reduced to a talk show on Rete 4. Borghi hints that he will go public and repeat everything to the press, stating that “the signature is technical, but the substance is political”. He tweets for a whole day, as if he were Leonardino Maria Del Vecchio, the samurai-like publisher who writes on Instagram: “Water on wood. Fire in the air. The seasons pass. What I love remains”. The one left speechless is Crosetto. He tells Borghi that Ukraine, despite the number of its soldiers, is holding out and that Russia has not gained ground; he adds that Ukraine has even opened the door to ceding territories. It is a heartfelt intervention, as Crosetto’s have been of late, yet the passion he puts into it is excessive even for Meloni. The president is saying that Crosetto’s outbursts are causing her “embarrassment”, and when Meloni says this, it is because she feels that the majority has “crumbled”.

It causes her embarrassment, let’s be clear, not because she is any less alarmed than Crosetto or does not want to help Kyiv. Far from it. She simply wonders: why offer Borghi and Salvini a platform, whilst at the same time offering it to Vannacci, who has been dug up from the past? Why exacerbate the atmosphere with interviews and statements? For a Chamber that now has nothing left to propose but commemorations, the expulsion of the Aventine MPs and the fall of the Berlin Wall – intellectual stimuli for Gianni Cuperlo, the Quirinale-contender Cuperlo who waxes lyrical: “The end of those regimes was experienced by many of us, on the Italian left, as a long-awaited, sought-after and desired liberation.” For this Chamber, it seems almost too good to be true to find a topic with which to show the world: “Yes, we are alive. We are still MPs.’ Laura Ravetto, a rising star of the past two decades and a protégée of Vannacci (an MP since 2006), addresses Meloni: “But does Meloni know that it was the League who made it known that Giorgetti had not yet signed the decree? Does she know that it was the League who contacted the TV and press? I would ask myself that.”

And yet Meloni is being questioned in Bologna and, when asked by journalists for news about the ANAC president, she replies that “he’ll be here soon. If he’s not on the left, can we put him in charge of ANAC?”. They say – and please forgive the use of the phrase ‘they say’ – but never believe the very high-level and reliable sources (it’s almost always the MP who’s good at eavesdropping) that Meloni suggested to Tajani and Salvini, ‘let’s come up with a plan’, because ‘I’ve had enough’. One of the fiercest civil wars is currently raging between two ramshackle parties, which, combined, probably don’t even reach ten per cent. Tajani and Salvini are reminiscent of the Bibì and Bibò comic strips, featuring the two mischievous children who drive their mum round the bend. It is worth noting that, on the right, after Meloni, the most reliable figure appears to be Cateno De Luca. Together with Lupi, he is considered the most reliable ally. Cateno De Luna, known to everyone as ‘Scateno’.