“Renzi is a politician, Calenda is complicated” –

Augustus Minzolini

July 5, 2024

In one of the side corridors of Montecitorio, on the left side, Elly Schlein questions her creation “the broad field” and what it lacks. The international pendulum, following Marine Le Pen’s success in the French elections and Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the TV debate with Trump, is swinging back to the left this week. “In England – she lists – there will be a triumph for the Labour Party. In France there has been a great deal of support for desistance among the left and Macronists and it is difficult for the right to reach an absolute majority”. And Italy? “I see a lot of nervousness on the right. This story that Meloni is thinking regarding early elections seems far-fetched to me: two years ago she reached her peak, she would have fewer parliamentarians than she has now. On our side? With the success we had in the last administrative elections – she explains – everyone should understand that there is no alternative to the “broad field”. And everyone must be there because for us the presence of a “center” in our alignment would be more than functional. But it must be a “center”, not many “centers”. I spoke with both Calenda and Renzi but for now I still see it as difficult to reunite them. In reality Renzi has a unitary spirit, he understood. Unfortunately Calenda does not, he is less political».

Yes, no matter how you look at it, with the advent of the new Italian bipolarism, we always come back to the same thing: elections are won in the center, or rather, the alignment that manages to bring the majority of the moderate vote to its side prevails. They say that Giorgia Meloni is content in the center-right of Forza Italia, that she considers Calenda and Renzi already finished. The Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, does not believe that this is the case. “In Italy – he observes – the electoral basins have always been the same for forty years. Here, as in all bipolar systems, you win by going toward the center. Giorgia knows this. Otherwise she would not have put a liberal like me in justice and I believe that in the end she will pay attention to that area. She will also look toward Renzi and Calenda to be sure of winning given that the wide field, in fact, already exists”. Here, on paper, everyone thinks that those central pieces of the electorate are essential to winning, but, at least for now, in practice, no one is moving. We are at Sora Camilla everyone wants her, but no one takes her. Or rather, Schlein has understood her strategic importance and, in fact, is working on it, trying to favor a re-aggregation that reproduces the Margherita of the past. Meloni – as they say – is satisfied with Forza Italia, she thinks that Calenda and Renzi will exhaust all their appeal in the next two years, will arrive exhausted at the appointment of the next political elections.

However, the prophecy of Silvio Berlusconi from just over a year ago comes to mind. Like Nordio, he was driven by a conviction: «In the end, everyone on the other side will join together, so that the two sides will be divided by only 2% of the votes.
Nothing more. Whoever gets the majority of the middle electorate wins.” An analysis shared half-heartedly by everyone, so much so that everyone is scrutinizing what is happening on the issue in the opposing camp. The “center”, or who might represent it, has become almost an obsession. “People very familiar with the world of Mediaset – confides in the middle of the Transatlantic the PD member Stefano Graziano – told me that Piers Ilvio intends to enter the field, because the coalition is too unbalanced to the right.” Of course, these are suggestions that demonstrate, however, how many are convinced that the game, in two years or whenever it will be, will be played in the middle. The real problem, however, is precisely the confusion that reigns in those parts. At least for now, the Forza Italia leadership has no intention of opening the doors to “returns” or, in any case, is doing nothing to encourage them or to embrace other subjects (there are rumors that Ettore Rosato, formerly of Italia Viva and now Azione, wants to make the big leap towards Tajani). On the left, the end of the third pole and the “suicide” of the European elections has created a lot of disorientation.

«On the left we see what this wide field is – says Luigi Casciello, representative of Azione orientamento Mara Carfagna – meanwhile on the right they don’t want us, they have forgotten that in Italy elections are lost by a few thousand votes.
Musumeci, not put on the list, once even made Berlusconi lose. Our problem, however, is that we are divided. Together we have one weight, divided another. Only that for us the problem is not only Calenda, but those around him, those who influence him like Francesca Scarpato, the link between him and Richetti. In the end, she is the one who commands”. And we return to the original sin of the center that looks to the left that has sunk itself because of personalisms. Luigi Marattin on Renzi and Calenda uses the Latin expression “simula stabunt, simula cadent”. Only that those names are both the problem and the resources of that area at least until, if ever, they manage to find another Pope. “There are those who are working, whispers Enrico Costa, on the Gentiloni hypothesis”. So for now everything is in Schlein’s hands, if she succeeds in the arduous task of imposing a peace between the two capons.