Daniele Albertazzi Profile picture
Professor of Politics, Research Community Lead (School of Social Sciences) @UniOfSurrey. #populism, #EuropeanPolitics. Posts=my views. Also on Blue Sky

Aug 25, 2019, 8 tweets

As discussions between PD & M5S continue, also abt name of PM, it's useful to go back a few days to re-read @GiuseppeConteIT's resignation speech. He DID press buttons at key points to please the PD. Rumours now have it that M5S has offered PD majority of ministeries...

... as long as they swallow bitter pill of allowing Conte to stay on (M5S says these rumours untrue, but they are believable). PD unhappy with Conte mainly 'cause they need to show their electorate there's discontinuity btw this & previous govt.

Easy to see why M5S fixated on Conte: allows party to claim that they are still delivering on same promises (with support from PD); also very unlikely he'd be rejected by members in online vote (he's popular with electorate, even more so among M5S voters).

Moreover, something like this would definitely weaken Salvini even further (he's losing ground in the polls): the Captain, as he likes to be called, would be made to look powerless (he pulls the plug, ends up with same PM who has nuked him in Parliament...).

I suspect this is possibly the greatest attraction of this choice for M5S - given that THEY have been shrinking in the polls, & losing ground to the League, since they agreed to form a govt with them (unprepared & naïve as they were). Symbolically, this would be a big victory.

An astute PD would give ground on this (Conte popular among electorate as a whole, as I have said) & score goals elsewhere (not just gaining key Ministries, but the RIGHT ministries to be able to push a coherent narrative; bag agreements in 5 areas @nzingaretti said important)

But the PD is not astute, hasn't got a coherent narrative to push & remains fundamentally & mortally divided. /END/

Update: various sources within PD now saying agreement more likely (with Conte staying on as PM).

#CrisidiGoverno #ElezioniAnticipate

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