In the face of possible early national elections, Italian populist Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s League is still dominating polls, with new figures putting the party even higher than their recent European Parliament election victory.
Polling firm SWG’s new numbers put Salvini’s party at 36.5 per cent, 2.2 per cent higher than their election result a week beforehand, Italian newspaper Il Giornale reports.
“The Italians choose us for concreteness, but also for the loyalty,” Salvini told Italian television programme Non è l’Arena this week and added: “To those who tell me that I should go to elections to double my parliamentarians, I answer ‘no’ because I am loyal and I gave my word for five years.”
While saying he wanted to continue with the coalition government alongside the Five Star Movement (M5S), Salvini said that if the Five Stars could not agree to go forward with his domestic agenda, the government would not be able to continue.
The Five Stars have seen a drastic fall in the polls since the national election, coming in third in the European elections behind the left-wing Democratic Party and scoring only 17.5 per cent in the SWG poll.
Earlier this week, Il Giornale reported that Italian President Sergio Mattarella could consider dissolving the country’s parliament as early as next month, predicting that the current coalition may have only a month, to a month and a half, to last.
Following his election victory, the first-ever nationwide election victory for the League, Salvini made it clear that he would be using the momentum from the election to push for domestic policies that had previously been dismissed by members of the Five Star Movement such as introducing a flat tax and general tax cuts.
To pay for the tax cuts and other policies, Salvini has advocated increased deficit spending which has also brought Italy into conflict with the European Union Commission who have raised the spectre of a potential sanctions process.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.