Interview by Giada Fazzalari
On June 8th and 9th, Europe went to vote on the renewal of the European Parliament. The Italian right has exercised a test of strength both in the country and within the majority forces themselves. Some opposition forces have asserted themselves even beyond expectations, others have suffered the consequences of disagreements and divisions. But if we want to create an alternative to the government, everyone’s contribution is needed. With Tommaso Labate, journalist and writer, commentator and presenter, we analyzed the vote with a look at the Italian political dynamics.
The polls confirmed a growing trend for the government forces. Is it a response from the Italians to the referendum that Giorgia Meloni wanted to hold on herself or have they rather given an indication of how they would like Europe?
«Certainly a clear response has arrived to the referendum on the prime minister. Giorgia Meloni was the only head of government among the large European countries to not only not be threatened by the vote, but even to have been rewarded. But there’s more: her luck is that the arithmetic architrave on which the government majority rested has not changed, thanks to a result that was not too unbalanced compared to the other government forces. Otherwise you would have risked going through those classic rites which are a shuffling of cards, a reshuffle or a government coupon.”
So in your opinion the government is stable until 2027?
«When I refer to tranquility in politics or long times, I am talking about three weeks. So anything can always happen.”
Salvini and Vannacci appear to have been instrumental to each other. Without the general the captain would be in greater difficulty today or on the contrary do you think he has distanced him from the historic basis of the League?
«You know when you’re hungry and you have to eat something quickly at all costs, but you only have snacks at home? Here is Vannacci for Salvini it was a “snack effect”. He cured a sort of hunger, which he needed in terms of consent, but he ate something that won’t do him any good in the long run.”
So in your opinion it will be a problem for Salvini’s leadership in the long run?
«Do you remember the extraordinary consensus that Calenda received when he ran with the Democratic Party? He ended up leaving and founding another party. The truth is that Salvini chose General Vannacci because he was afraid of running himself, something he considered for a long time. However, he would have risked heavy repercussions both in his relationship with the other center-right leaders who ran, Tajani and Meloni, and above all because the presence of Salvini on the list would have been the appetizer of a sort of early congress of the League. He would have measured himself with a consensus that is probably no longer what it once was in the party.”
The M5S led by Conte achieved its worst result ever. Is this a sign that part of the old Democratic Party electorate has returned home?
«This is certainly a topic but I still think that the “exchange” of consensus between the Pd and M5S has never really taken place. The M5S drew, at its inception, from the sentiment spread by anti-politics and then, from that area of 20% of the electorate which has been wandering from party to party since 2014. The same one who in 2014, for example, believed in Renzi, then dumped him and voted for the Five Star Movement which in fact went from 20 to 35% in 2018. A consensus that then passed to Salvini and finally to Meloni. There is a sort of conformist electorate that, in order to “punish” the person who voted, will then betray them with the leader of the day, otherwise these strong fluctuations cannot be explained. Renzi took 40.8% in 2014 and Salvini 35% in 2019. Today we’ll see how it went.”
So it was a vote on the leaders?
«It is an election in which opinion voting is experimented. It’s a sort of super survey. In politics it is the closest election to a televote.”
No one would be able to say today what Ilaria Salis’ thoughts are on Europe; yet he won a seat in Strasbourg with an avalanche of preferences. What signal is it?
«It is a signal that should not be dismissed with disdain. There is a precedent that you socialists will remember: when Tortora was a candidate for the European elections in 1984, his ideas on the common European market of the EEC could not be said to have been known. But like Ilaria Salis (and I don’t want to say that one situation was worse than the other because they are two different things) he had stumbled into a bad story that turned out to be a personal tragedy. Salis is the symbol of a sort of rebellion against the injustice of the State, a battle for guarantees. And it is no coincidence that it was the Alleanza Verdi Sinistra that nominated her.”
Probably the Democratic Party also wanted to nominate her…
«It was one of those cases in which Schlein backtracked after the regional elections that had just been held, because there was tension even with those in the party who had supported her in the primary phase. But then he had had a good intuition.”
The candidates of the United States of Europe list were the only ones to talk about Europe while the other parties focused more on internal issues. In your opinion, was the failure to reach 4% due to this? Did the reformists who split harm each other?
«Although the “sympathometer” is not sky-high, 7% of the reformists, in a condition of mutual arguments and accusations, is a result that would make the difference in a clash in the political elections between the centre-left and the centre-right. Even if there will always be someone who theorizes that the alliance with the reformists would cause the center-left to lose consensus.”
Some say they are not close to that area.
«Renzi and Calenda can be unpleasant to anyone you want, but it is indisputable that they are more centre-left than centre-right. Renzi was the leader of the Democratic Party and Prime Minister of that party; Calenda was a representative candidate for the European elections with the Democratic Party and Minister of the Renzi government. We need a recomposition with this piece of the country which is closer to the centre-left than to the centre-right.”
Is it a mistake to exclude rather than include if you want to win elections?
«In a possible dispute based on bipolarism, this area cannot be ignored if we want to create an alternative to the government. Here we are not talking about Renzi or Calenda, nor about natural persons. But we are talking about a part of the country that recognizes itself in the secular, reformist and in any case anti-fascist, anti-nationalist, pro-European world, in opposition to this right. It is necessary to deal with these forces and include them in the progressive world if we want to aspire and win elections.”
These reasonings were also made at the time of the Prodi – Berlusconi clashes.
«Well, as much as Prodi probably preferred to do without Mastella and Bertinotti or as much as he didn’t find them the nicest people on the planet, he knew that he couldn’t ignore the area they represented. And in fact without that area, for example, the second time in government he would not have returned.”
So is the alternative to this right being built without being able to do without anyone beyond the divisions that exist?
«An agreement can be reached if there is an intention to do so. Saying that in certain local elections the center-left won even without the reformists is like claiming that world hunger doesn’t exist because you’re eating a sandwich. The theme is: if the progressive world that recognizes itself in what is called the centre-left, starting with the Democratic Party, wants to win the next political elections in a basically conservative country, it cannot ignore the reformists of the centre-left. It is very clear, even trivial to say it. And the United States of Europe operation had its own charm for lovers of politics, it reminds me of the Rose in the Fist.”
