Populist League Leader Matteo Salvini has opened the way for firebrand Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni to become Italy’s next Prime Minister if her party secures the most votes.
Salvini, whose League is part of the centre-right coalition with Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI), said that he would support the socially conservative anti-communist firebrand if her party secured the most votes in next month’s national election.
“This is democracy. If Giorgia Meloni takes one more vote, the prime minister is Giorgia Meloni. If Matteo Salvini takes one more vote, Matteo Salvini does. You can’t be clearer, more beautiful and linear than that,” Salvini said this week, Il Giornale reports.
The support for Meloni by Salvini comes after former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia and another member of the centre-right coalition, indicated he would also support Meloni for Prime Minister if the FdI wins the most votes.
“Meloni, like Matteo Salvini, like many exponents of Forza Italia and the other parties of the coalition, has all the credentials and authority to lead a high-profile government, credible in the world, firmly linked to Europe and the West, Berlusconi said.
Antonio Tajani, another major figure in Forza Italia and former president of the European Parliament, has also said he supports whoever gets the most votes to decide on the Prime Minister.
So far, polls show Meloni’s FdI well ahead of her allies, with an SWG poll putting the national-conservative FdI at 23.8 per cent, with Salvini’s League trailing behind at 12.5 per cent and Forza Italia at 8 per cent.
Meloni is well-known for her socially conservative beliefs, including opposition to same-sex marriage, opposing mass migration and being against pushing LGBT and gender ideology on children.
Her FdI party are also noted anti-communists and suggested banning communism in Italy entirely using the same laws used to ban fascist parties. Yet despite her anti-extremist stance, Meloni has been accused of having “neo-fascists” among her support base.
Dismissing the comments, Meloni said — in remarks reported by the UK’s Daily Telegraph — that her party had much in common with moderate conservative parties like the British Tories, who at best could be considered to be on the globalist centre-right.
“I have been reading that the victory of Fratelli d’Italia in the September elections would mean a disaster, leading to an authoritarian turn, Italy’s departure from the euro and other nonsense of this sort. None of this is true”, she said.
Salvini, meanwhile, has hinted that he may be open to reprising his role as Italian Interior Minister in a new right-wing coalition government, arguing that a member of his League should assume the role, and stating the successes he had in tackling illegal immigration while Interior Minister in 2018 and 2019.
“I count on a man or a woman from the League at the Viminale [Interior Ministry] because we wrote the security decrees. I think, with regard to immigration, that in 2018 and 2019, Italy was a safer, more protected, more European country. I will go where the Italians send me,” Salvini stated last week.