Salvini Faces League Jitters as Hopes Fade for Knockout Blow
Salvini Faces League Jitters as Hopes for Knockout Blow Falter
(Bloomberg) -- Matteo Salvini’s lieutenants are laying the groundwork for a post-election peace offering to their allies in Italy’s fractious coalition as they calculate they may not land a knockout blow in Sunday’s European Parliament vote.
Salvini’s senior adviser Giancarlo Giorgetti sounded a cautionary note on Wednesday, saying the 30% threshold, which many analysts see as a position from which their party, the League, could call the shots or even pull the plug on the government, “seems ambitious to me.”
Giorgetti, who’s also cabinet undersecretary, told journalists at the Foreign Press Association in Rome, “I’ll offer you all Champagne if we get 30%.”
The League is expecting to poll less than 30% and win the election by only a narrow margin over its coalition partner, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, according to two senior League officials who asked not to be named discussing internal deliberations.
The League isn’t counting on the performance it would need nationwide -- not only in its stronghold in the wealthy north -- to reach 30%, one of the officials said. Salvini’s party started life as the Northern League, a strictly regional, rabidly pro-secession group, and the leader has worked to transform the organization into a national force.
Year of Infighting
Despite sharing power for just under a year, the League and Five Star have skirmished on issues from taxes to immigration to infrastructure to security and those tensions have increased over the course of the campaign.
Salvini has long resisted pressure from senior party figures, including Giorgetti, who want to ditch Five Star. Salvini insists no alternative parliamentary majority is available.
Without a decisive victory it will be in the League’s interest to push through measures such as a so-called flat tax to build up support among voters in the coming months, said a League lawmaker, who asked not to be named discussing party strategy.
The flat tax will be the government’s top priority if the League finishes first in the election, Salvini told Rai radio on Thursday, reiterating that he won’t seek a post-vote cabinet shakeup.
As the head of the junior party in the coalition, Salvini is expected to declare victory if the League wins anything more than the 17% it scored in last year’s general elections. His party won just 6% in the last European Parliament election in 2014.
To contact the reporter on this story: John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Jerrold Colten
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