Populist League (Lega) leader Matteo Salvini met with former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi this week to forge a new alliance against the new leftist coalition government.
Salvini and the Forza Italia leader joined forces to reform the centre-right coalition they went into the last election with following what was dubbed as a “cordial meeting” by sources within Forza Italia, Italian newspaper Il Giornale reports.
“They agreed to make a common front for an effective opposition to the government of the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party,” the source added.
Berlusconi also commented on the meeting, saying: “Everything went well, very well. We are in complete harmony. We talked a little about everything and about the opposition.”
The meeting comes soon after Salvini joined forces with the national-conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI), participating in outdoor demonstrations alongside their leader Giorgia Meloni who has slammed the new coalition and demanded fresh elections.
Earlier this week Meloni told a crowd in Rome: “Parliamentary Republic does not mean that the parliament can be organised against the people. They know they are doing something the Italians don’t want and because they know they can’t win a free competition in the elections, they steal it. They are thieves of democracy, thieves of sovereignty, thieves.”
Salvini also announced a large event to be held in Rome on October 19th and now sources within the League have claimed that the event will also be attended by members of Forza Italia as well as the FdI.
Combined, the three centre-right parties poll at nearly 50 per cent of the vote in some recent polls, with the League continuing to poll at 30 per cent or more.
Polls have also shown that the new leftist coalition, which looks set to open Italy’s borders once more to mass migration, is incredibly unpopular, with only around one in three Italians supporting it.