The pains of the young Salvini (and Di Maio ... there is also him)

(To David Rossi)
06/08/18

The cabinet Conte - powered by Salvini and driven by the less visible Di Maio - does not scare anyone. This is the conclusion that comes from reading the chronicles of the last three months, from the tiring gestation to the approval of the Decree Dignity. Not that the government of a democratic country should strike fear: we are not in front of either Lukashenko or Erdogan. But at least it should show to have the explicit consent of a productive or culturally strong part of the civil society of the country, not only to have more trolls of PD and Forza Italia. Instead, in the current scenario, the great press of the North and the media of the various "masters", the trade unions and entrepreneurs, artisans and traders, the Catholic Church and the Jewish communities: all have raised strong criticism and have stubbornly denied the Conte government even the benefit of a credit facility granted to almost all governments of the past.

From the point of view of the productive class and the socio-cultural institutions, no one was exposed by approving the first measures of the executive, even when the ministers announced the best intentions or beat the fist on the table: even the prudence of those who fear to be enemies the new powerful newly established and destined to influence the destinies of the country for the years to come. Perhaps only the unemployed of the South, the public employment and pensioners still guarantee a strong consensus to the yellow-green majority, waiting anxiously for the income of citizenship and a radical reform of the Fornero law, but also ready to feel upset in the event that the government in office he offered them only meager allowances and few adjustments to the main reform desired by the Monti cabinet.

In addition to the uncertain electoral base, not to incur reverential fears is the strange figure of the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, who reigns but does not govern (to that think Salvini and Di Maio) as the Queen Elizabeth II and often gives the luxury of entire weeks of silence like the good-natured Andropov and Chernenko. Someone said that seems to count as the two of spades when the trump is flowers: can only provide meager mediation works when Salvini seems too caught up in propaganda to put down their feet on the ground or when the Five Stars appear on the verge of blowing up the straitjacket put by President Mattarella to the executive, in the respectable people of the Minister of the economy Tria and that of the Foreign Affairs Moavero Milanese. However, Conte, who seems more educated and acquainted with the international and institutional issues of his deputies, knows that without this "shirt" the country would fall prey to the Troika in a few weeks.

They remain, able to inspire fear, the polls that give the government an overwhelming majority of 60% of the consensus, measured obviously in the wake of the last election1 and in a historic period of great calm, we would say "quiet before the storm", in which the Italians are even able to please for an interior minister who does the bulk to block almost non-existent migratory flows, compared to what happened in the 2015- 16 to which he had placed a patch his predecessor, the former PCI Minniti, a year ago.

Already, the calm and positive polls ... Only those who can not look beyond their nose do not see that the economy sends signals to say the least disturbing (a third of growth, peak unemployment, spread to the highest by 5 years, imminenza the triggering of the safeguard and VAT increase clauses, the end of the Quantitave Easing, etc.), to which President Trump, a self-styled friend of the current majority, adds of his raising tariff walls to the detriment of businesses and trade. Trump is in good company in making disasters: not just the opposition, but the workers and entrepreneurs have been pushing for weeks because the Conte government does not cause damage to the economy by compressing the flexibility of the labor market, blocking the construction of strategic infrastructure, preventing private investments in strategic companies with water at the gorge (Alitalia, Ilva, etc.) and compromising companies and entities to which Italians have entrusted their savings of a lifetime (they say nothing about INPS and Cassa depositi e prestiti?): in this, find a rubber wall for their many complaints.

Not that within the same government there are missing "crickets" wise but unheard, starting from the Minister of Defense Trenta (photo) that seems to understand more and better than his colleague to the Interior that the country must not give abroad a picture of unreliability in the implementation of the treaties, nor go to the neighboring nations to lay down the law remaining unheard (the meeting of Salvini with the Libyan colleague will have taught something?).

Nobody, we said, is afraid to warn the government that it is no longer about campaigning, despite the prospect of a low-handed victory in the event of early elections, to pay attention to Piepoli and colleagues. Nor are the warnings that, despite Grillo and Casaleggio announcing the death of Liberal Democrat parliamentarianism, sooner or later Lega and Cinque Stelle will have to account to voters, showing the world if for the first time pollsters have been good prophets or if love between the "sovereigns" and their voters lasted the time of a summer at sea.

The fact is that Salvini and Di Maio, ignoring the blows suffered by Renzi, seem to really believe their electoral strength: after all, they think, Democrats and Forzisti have no interest in making serious opposition, since in the event of an election would be reduced to minimum terms. Except, then, be amazed when the new president of Forza Italia Tajani violates the label of the former "plastic party" forcing the leader and founder not to compromise with the League on the presidency of RAI, at the cost of losing a part of elected officials. After all, Salvini and Di Maio point, in the hypothesis that that 60% of consents become just the 40%, to tear the electoral base of the other and to remain as a stakeholder of the Italian political system. Reasoning in electoral terms, they forget that the elections do not indicate the leaders and leaders of the majority, nor the Russian or American trolls at their service, but the Head of State, which has already shown to be able to bend the immodest leaders of the majority yellow-green and has the necessary powers to bring them to milder advice or even to drive a possible new political crisis.

In short, those who have lived the short season of the Berlusconi I government, who have been in charge for less than seven months in the 1994, today has the impression of a déjà-vu: that of a weak government, with the two reference shareholders ready to fight as a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law as soon as the waters get rough. And with the elections not so close even in case of breakdown: in the 1994 Scalfaro stubbornly denied, as Mattarella would do now, the recourse to the polls ... But there are also two fundamental differences: the electoral promises of Lega and Cinque Stelle, unlike the Berlusconi's anti-communism of the "descent into the field", have an expiration date, while the state budget - unless you want to crack the moneybox of the Cassa depositi e prestiti and break with the European Union - today does not allow the creative finance of governments of the nineties.

In short, a "poor" government that has been impelled to realize too many electoral promises does not seem able to silence the many votes of dissent, especially on the eve of a financial maneuver for the new year in which Conte, Salvini and Di Maio force of things, they will have to spoil someone and, willy-nilly, they will have to put their hands in the pockets of many2. If, then, the recently positive economic scenario will become very negative, then someone will have to regret not having remained in opposition to throwing arrows at the government, and will have to tell the country that now things with the government of change are much better, even if everything goes wrong.

In short, the government yellow-green, with the bag full of promises to keep and the wallet empty, can not even incite reverential fears. But a rapid change of scenery, possible during the 2019, with the decrease of the economy, the increase of inflation and unemployment, the end of the quantitative easing and - last but not least - the confirmation of the spread to very high levels for even just medium-short periods, it could change things a lot. At that point, the decisions of the government, if not well coordinated with the productive part of the country but only with keyboard lions and with that part of the population that presses for a massive public spending, they could really scare you. And not just metaphorically3.

  

1 Do you remember how the pollsters gave Renzi PD around 40% for a whole year after the result of the 2014 European elections, so that the current Scandicci senator was convinced to spend all his energies on the electoral law known as Italicum , but then lose all the elections from the 2015 to today?

2 Have the military calculated how they will change their standard of living with foreseeable cuts to missions abroad?

3 Those who thought this article too alarmist and "biased" could read The Sun 24 Hours Today: http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2018-08-04/nelle-sale-city-caso-b... as regards the international alarm on our accounts managed by the yellow-green majority.

(photo: presidency of the council of ministers)