The League’s conference gets underway, with Salvini and Garavaglia locked in a battle over two different visions for the party

Matteo Salvini versus Massimo Garavaglia. It’s time for a showdown. The extraordinary congress, unexpectedly convened by the outgoing secretary from the stage at Pontida last month to put an end to the ongoing turmoil within the party fuelled by the ‘northern faction’. A cross-party alliance led by the Governor of Lombardy Attilio Fontana and the Senate group leader Massimiliano Romeo (who is also secretary of the Lega Lombarda) and bolstered by the former ‘Doge’ Luca Zaia, the president of Friuli-Venezia Giulia Massimiliano Fedriga and the president of the autonomous province of Trento Maurizio Fugatti. All are convinced of the need to revitalise the ‘northern question’ and to adopt a more collegial approach to running the party.

Faced with Salvini’s ‘knight’s move’ – designed to force a head-to-head contest and compel everyone to take a stand – none of his ‘rivals’ has, however, decided to stand as a candidate, partly because the ‘captain’s’ re-election is taken for granted by everyone: the 705 delegates (400 elected, the rest holding institutional posts) are, in fact, the very same people who ‘overwhelmingly backed’ Salvini last year. But what seemed destined to be a one-man show is now set to be a livelier congress following the decision by Massimo Garavaglia, former Minister for Tourism and current Chair of the Senate’s Finance and Treasury Committee, to enter the fray and champion the party’s call for renewal. The signatures of 80 delegates (collected with some difficulty) were required to stand as a candidate. And it is no coincidence that both Fontana and Romeo – the leading figures who have most openly supported the outgoing secretary’s line in recent months – signed in support of Garavaglia (who hails from Cuggiono, in the province of Milan).

Today and tomorrow, therefore, two different visions of the party will go head to head. At a party conference for which he has chosen the slogan “League of Struggle and Government” to revamp the image of a party capable of operating within the institutions whilst also listening to the demands of its grassroots, Salvini is not abandoning his nationalist-sovereignist line. The message is “autonomists in Italia, patriots and sovereignists in Europe”, in opposition to the bureaucrats in Brussels and because “we have nothing to do with von der Leyen and Draghi and we want to be an alternative to the EPP”.

Pushing hard on security and turning the spotlight on a popular issue such as pensions to boost his standing in the polls, with no intention of backing down one iota from the ‘quota 64’ retirement plan, even if it means throwing four years of strict fiscal discipline out the window. These demands, as anticipated on Thursday by *Il Sole 24 Ore*, have taken the form of a de facto veto: in short, without pension reforms, the League would threaten not to vote for the budget. With the debate at the party congress now concluded, Salvini is calling for a party that is ‘cohesive and united, capable of speaking with one voice, without public controversies in the press or in books’, specifying that factions within the party ‘have never existed and never will’.

Garavaglia’s political line – he is very close to the Minister for the Economy, Giorgetti, who did not endorse either candidate – aims to reaffirm the League’s federalist, populist and regional identity, viewing it as a pragmatic and post-ideological political force that seeks to transcend the traditional categories of right and left. The aim, he explains, is “to help the League grow by moving it away from the stereotype of being far-right. Our electorate cuts across the political spectrum”. A liberal League both in economic matters (“if I had to choose between certain ideas of Borghi’s and those of Giorgetti’s, I’d choose Giorgetti any day”) and in the field of civil rights. Standing alongside SMEs and the self-employed, “but which, on social issues, is actually further to the left than the left itself”. The fight against irregular immigration and crime remain key issues. Security remains central, but “the main reason I decided to stand is to give a voice back to the regions and to represent the concerns of those who generate GDP, because the League’s true mission is to protect those who generate revenue and secure jobs.”