Did Salvini Fold or Go Undercover by Supporting Draghi?
Matteo Salvini just stabbed the populists in the throat. Or did he? The Italian firebrand and face of the Italian populist right did the unthinkable over the weekend, by very conditionally supporting former ECB President Mario Draghi’s attempt to form a government.
Salvini, as the head of the Center Right coalition and Lega, is in political limbo. He’s embroiled in a nonsensical lawsuit in Sicily which is nothing more than political theatre meant to dog him and de-legitimize him.
He’s been out of power since September 2019 when he broke the government formed between Lega and Five Star Movement(M5S). M5S leader Luigi Di Maio then betrayed the party’s populists by making a deal with their personal devil, the Democrats to stay in power.
At the time Salvini’s Lega was polling between 35-38% and would have waltzed into power via elections had Di Maio not made the deal with former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
Renzi then stabbed Di Maio by splitting off from the Democrats, forming his own party which has almost zero popular support, but he took two cabinet ministers with him, collapsing that government.
And that, briefly, brings us to today.
Today the polls, after a year and a half of trauma and Salvini being out of power, have shifted but not by as much as the headlines would suggest.
Italy, Demos & Pi poll:
LEGA-ID: 23%
PD-S&D: 21% (-1)
FdI-ECR: 17%
M5S-NI: 15% (-1)
FI-EPP: 8% ( 1)
LeU-S&D|LEFT: 3%
A-S&D: 3%
IV-RE: 3%
E-RE: 2%/- vs. 7-10 Dec. ’20
Field work: 3-5 February 2021
Sample size: 1,001
➤ https://t.co/yZmKw0Xawt pic.twitter.com/zZ564H7fNS— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) February 8, 2021
Lega’s support is off but the Brothers of Italy (FdL) have taken those voters and FdL are farther to the right than Salvini’s more centrist/populist Lega.
Roughly the same percentage of Italians support parties to the right of center, far more than in 2018. In effect, what’s happened is the populists who voted for M5S in 2018 migrated first to Salvini’s Lega once it became clear M5S was incapable of governing.
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Article from LewRockwell
