Pontida Northern League without foreign leaders: Salvini focuses on territorial identity

It will be a national-regional Pontida. No foreign leaders at the League gathering, marked this year by a haemorrhage of consensus and harsh internal rifts. And it is no coincidence that the stage will be entirely for administrators, governors and the people of the Carroccio who are clamoring. This is what secretary Matteo Salvini decided for September 20th. And so the Northern wing claims the news: "It's thanks to us", says more than one rebel. For months they have been asking the leader to listen to the north, to step aside and delegate responsibilities to the team. In four words: "Less me and more us", lashes Massimiliano Romeo at the head of the Lombard League, among the most pressing in the accusations and therefore in the balance in his role as group leader in the Senate.

The party's narrative is different: the absence of Marine Le Pen or Santiago Abascal, as in recent years, was shared with the European allies - is the premise in a note - and dictated by the "will to have a Pontida with a strong identity, entirely focused on the people of the League, on its militants and administrators, on the territories". As well as being more attentive to issues such as "security, pensions, cutting the cost of living", on which the next policies will be based. In short, a hand extended by the secretary to the base in turmoil, in the first meeting without Umberto Bossi. A possible script, then, could be to return to the old Pontida formula when the regional secretaries of the Northern League also spoke on stage.

It is the concrete effect of the 'Pontida pact': the agreement made between Salvini and the frondisti so as not to dirty the sacredness of the meadow which has hosted the event for over thirty years but is now more at risk of absences than protests. From various northern provinces, at the moment, defections can be sensed in the buses, almost halved, organized to reach the Bergamo area.

In short, the armed truce remains, as demonstrated by the face-to-face meeting on Wednesday between Salvini and the governors (the Lombard Attilio Fontana, the Friulian Massimiliano Fedriga, the president of the province of Trento, Maurizio Fugatti and the former Doge, Luca Zaia). No concessions from the "captain" and no disagreements from the dissidents. Apart from the desire, announced by Fontana, to carry forward the project of the Northern association.

After September 20, however, the rebels could return to the ring. Romeo admits it: "We try to arrive in Pontida as united as possible" but "the problems remain and we have to face them".

Interviewed on Radio 24 and then on Sky, the group leader doesn't beat around the bush: "We are losing the voters' trust in the League.

We've gentrified a bit. We thought about the management of power and less about the territory." And looking at the former and now rival Vannacci, he warns: "The League must not be a copy of other movements".