The Return of Renzi: Italy’s former Prime Minister is re-elected leader of governing Democratic Party

Matteo Renzi celebrates his re-election as Secretary of Italy’s Democratic Party.
His two opponents left trailing in the dust, Matteo Renzi last night stormed to victory in the primaries of Italy's governing Democratic Party. Returning to the role he had stepped down from in February, the former Prime Minister succeeded in securing a resounding 70 percent of the vote, sending a clear message to his detractors that, despite being forced out of government by national rejection of his flagship constitutional reforms last December, Matteo Renzi is not yet a spent force in Italian politics. 

Reported to be closely watching the rise of Emmanuel Macron in France, it is no secret that Renzi sees in the French presidential candidate a blueprint for the revival of his own fortunes south of the Alps. The adoption by Renzi’s campaign of the slogan In Cammino (On the way), an almost direct transliteration of Macron’s En Marche, has drawn many to compare the two unashamed continental centrists. With an Italian general election looming early in 2018, and with the populist Five Star Movement currently leading in the polls, the lessons of Macron’s victory over Le Pen are ones the PD is badly in need of learning if Renzi is ever to realise his keenly nursed hopes of a restoration to the Chigi. 

But it also remains possible that Renzi will utilise his overwhelming re-endorsement by party supporters to plot a more imminent return to power. His handpicked successor as Prime Minister, Paolo Gentilioni, is widely seen as little more than a placeholder and would likely step graciously aside to make way for his former leader. Flush with his new mandate to head the Italian Parliament's largest party, Renzi would be in a strong position to persuade President Mattarella that he should once again be invited to head the government as well. 

However, it may prove a wiser to course to wait a little longer in the wings. Defeat in December’s divisive referendum is still a wound barely healed and, without a general election victory, the premature return of a Prime Minister so recently rejected would likely undermine rather than strengthen Renzi’s position heading into the crucial 2018 contest. The fight to hold off the Five Star Movement will be tough, and what time is left might better be spent in constructing the Macron-style coalition Renzi will need to build for any hope of success. 


Yet yesterday’s vote hugely boosts Renzi’s political position, solidifying his hold over the party and re-galvanising his core base of supporters, many of whom were left reeling in the wake of December’s unceremonious departure. “We will now move forward together,” was the message given to his celebrating supporters following last nights primaries victory. Whether he will in fact be able to retake Rome is an open question, but five months on from his political career being torn into what seemed irrevocable tatters by the referendum vote, Matteo Renzi has engineered a spectacular recovery. Today he stands propelled once more back to the forefront of Italian politics, ready to lead the Democratic Party’s fightback against the anti-establishment Five Star and with a triumphant return to the Chigi only a tantalising step away. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Brexit Election: Not what government, but what Brexit

Image
This election is not about changing government. There is no realistic prospect of that. Mrs May will still be Prime Minister on 9th June (even the question of Jeremy Corbyn remaining Leader of the Opposition seems likely to be answered in the affirmative). Given the near inevitability of Conservative victory in the current political climate, the question put to the people is not what government, but what Brexit? This election will determine the shape of Britain's exit from the European Union and what the post-Brexit nation will look like. Britain's future prosperity and position in the world depends on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, there is no more important question in British politics today, and it must be answered rightly, In a future filled with uncertainty there is at least one truth: Labour is heading for defeat. Corbyn's leadership is not the sole source of Labour's woes, whoever the leader the electoral mountain the party needs to climb woul
Read more

Jeremy Corbyn: Reactionary not Revolutionary

Image
Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.  It is in the ranks of those most bitterly resisting change, not leading the progressive forward charge, that Jeremy Corbyn has ever been foremost. He is a Labour leader of the past, not the future.  The Labour leader revels in raging against the establishment, exults in playing the revolutionary, but in truth there is more of the reactionary than the radical in Jeremy Corbyn. A Bennite without Tony Benn’s effortless charm, a disciple of Michael Foot without Foot’s wit or intelligence, Corbyn lacks even the decency to confine himself to the 1980s. Instead, for the benefit of those who missed the show first-time round, he’s determined to stage a re-enactment. But regardless of whether this election ends up resembling more 1983 or 1987, Mr Corbyn has certainly proven himself to be no harbinger of the future. He is instead little more than the shadow of a discredited past. With dogmatism seldom being the bed-fellow of origi
Read more

TWENTY YEARS ON FROM NEW LABOUR’S HISTORIC VICTORY, THE CENTRE IS AGAIN RESURGENT

Image
A newly elected Tony Blair arrives in Downing Street, 2nd May 1997 Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Labour’s 1997 landslide victory, the greatest ever achieved in the party’s history and one which ushered in thirteen years of unbroken Labour rule. Swept into government on a wave of optimism, Tony Blair secured for the Centre-ground a dominant grip on British politics only recently broken by Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, the vote to leave the European Union and David Cameron’s departure from Downing Street. In viewing the current state of Anglo-American politics, a progressive centrist might rightly despair. Brexit in Britain and Trump in the US seem to spell the resounding rejection of Blair’s brand of third-way politics. The party of Jeremy Corbyn makes no secret of its disavowal of the New Labour legacy. Despite it being twenty years on from 1997, Corbyn’s Labour increasingly acts as if it were once again 1983 and is likely on course to earn itself a similar
Read more