Ambition and Betrayal Sink Italy’s Puppet Master
Ambition and Betrayal Sink Italy’s Puppet Master
(Bloomberg) -- Matteo Salvini was at the apex of his political dominance less than a month ago as go-go dancers gyrated to the national anthem while he improvised as a DJ at a beach bar.
Italy’s deputy prime minister and ringleader of Europe’s anti-immigration forces was back in a suit and tie in the splendor of the presidential palace in Rome this week. But rather than rocking the crowd, he was blaming an international conspiracy for booting him out of office. His attempt to grab power by forcing early elections had backfired.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was handed a chance to form a new coalition without Salvini and his League party. A Donald Trump fan who has railed against the European Union, France and Germany, Salvini told reporters the plan was probably concocted at the Group of Seven summit of world leaders in Biarritz last weekend.
“Some people were annoyed by a government that was giving back pride, dignity and sovereignty to Italian families and businesses,” said Salvini, using a line from his “Italy First” playbook.
Yet that government was the one Salvini himself had toppled.
The decline of the firebrand leader is remarkable even for Italy’s Machiavellian politics, even though writing him off would be dangerous. Salvini’s party was polling at a record high and the premiership appeared there for the taking. Instead, his failed gambit is a story of thwarted ambition, betrayal and opportunistic friendships among his bitter rivals.
For Europe, it will shift Italy’s government back toward the continent’s mainstream and deal a blow to the group of populists – from Brexit Britain to Poland and Viktor Orban’s “illiberal democracy” in Hungary – that Salvini had sought to corral against Brussels.
Salvini’s ambition to go from puppet master to premier was grounded in support. His admirers call him “The Captain” after he steered a party languishing at 4 percent in opinion polls when he took over in 2013 to close to 40%. Indeed, he was anxious to cash in and ditch the coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.
But the 46-year-old didn’t have any choice about the timing of when to do it, according to two senior League lawmakers who declined to be named. For months his lieutenants had been urging him to drop Five Star, and now time was pressing and pressure building with government action stalled in parliament. The League blamed Five Star.
Salvini also dreaded being locked into the coalition for at least another year, a situation that would have arisen from a final parliamentary vote on revamping the legislature that had been due next month. So shortly after his showing in swimming trunks at the Papeete Beach club on Italy’s Adriatic coast a few weeks ago, Salvini acted.
He kept his fellow deputy premier, Luigi Di Maio of Five Star, in the dark about his decision to pull the plug on their deal to govern together. On Aug. 7, Salvini told Conte he was walking away, and it was only in the evening that Salvini spoke to Di Maio, according to a Five Star government member and a party official.
Di Maio asked Salvini if he realized what he was doing and called him “treacherous.” He asked Salvini to allow the parliamentary reform bill, which would reduce the number of lawmakers, to go through parliament on Sept. 9.
Salvini retorted, in comments first reported by newspaper Corriere della Sera, that the government wouldn’t last until September. There must be elections, Salvini said. Salvini’s office didn’t reply to a request for comment on the exchange.
The following day, Salvini set his sights high. “I ask Italians whether they want to give me full powers to do things as they should be done,” Salvini told reporters in the city of Pescara. He said he was “for certain” a candidate for the premiership. The “full powers” comment sparked protests from his political foes.
But Salvini miscalculated. An appeal by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of the center-left Democratic Party for an alliance with Five Star swiftly won support from lawmakers from both parties – even though they have been at each other’s throats for years.
The prospect of losing their jobs, so soon after the last general elections in March 2018, was no doubt a consideration for Five Star and the Democratic Party in both the upper and lower houses of parliament. League lawmakers said many Five Star counterparts had begged them not to make the government collapse, worried about their posts.
Democratic Party leader Nicola Zingaretti, who had been against the idea of an alliance with Five Star, found himself under mounting pressure to throw his weight behind such a coalition. He gradually opened to the idea of giving Conte, 55, a new run as premier.
A lawyer and former academic, Conte had managed to assert his authority over the past year, forcing Salvini and Di Maio to compromise by making talks over a series of issues drag into the night, according to an adviser to the premier.
Conte now has to resolve remaining hurdles – drawing up a cabinet and a common program for government – before he can report back to President Sergio Mattarella next week.
He at least has the support of financial markets, which rallied as it became clear Salvini would no longer be in power to antagonize Brussels over immigration and spending. The new coalition would seek to avoid a clash with the EU over Italy’s 2020 budget, according to officials.
Salvini, though, is going down fighting. As his foes plotted to banish him from power, he attempted to salvage the alliance with Five Star. He offered the premiership to Di Maio, the latter told reporters after meeting with the president on Wednesday.
League officials and people close to Salvini are sure he will be back. Five Star and the Democratic Party are already arguing with each other, and both are internally divided, said a senior League lawmaker. In contrast, the League is “military” in its unity, the lawmaker said, predicting that early next year the new alliance will “explode.”
In the meantime, Salvini could take some relief from an admirer abroad. Hungarian leader Orban sent a letter expressing “my very high esteem and my gratitude” for everything Salvini had done for Italy and for all Europe.
Whatever Italian politics brings in future, he wrote, “we consider you as a comrade-in-arms in our battle to stop immigration and to preserve European Christian heritage.”
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Rodney Jefferson
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