Referendum, why with 12 million votes the opposition will say they won even without a quorum

It was supposed to be the decisive pushback to the right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni, with all the oppositions united around the battle against the differentiated autonomy of the League, the 'split Italy'. The photo of last September, with all the leaders of the broad camp in front of the Supreme Court for the deposit of the 1.3 million signatures against the Calderoli law, really seemed to mark the beginning of something new: the secretary of the PD Elly Schlein next to the Cgil leader Maurizio Landini, M5s president Giuseppe Conte next to the iron Renzian Maria Elena Boschi.

But then the Constitutional Court took care of removing from the political field a clash between North and South that would have really risked splitting the country: first, in November 2024, with the ruling that practically rewrote the Calderoli law, rejecting it on no less than seven points; then, last January, with the decision to stop the referendum as a consequence of the rewriting of the law that was the subject of the question. And so the wide field immediately dispersed: popular vote on 8 and 9 June remained the question aimed at lowering the years of residence required to apply for Italian citizenship from 10 to 5, and here Conte has left himself free to vote on the insidious issue of immigration, and the four questions on labour presented by Landini's CGIL that aim to cancel what remains of the renzian Jobs act, and here it is the same PD that is divided.

In the Dem house it is already war: on one side are lined up the defenders of the reform supported by the entire party ten years ago, when Matteo Renzi was premier and secretary of the PD, and who now have no intention of making a public abjuration and disowning their work (from Lorenzo Guerini to Graziano Delrio, from Alessandro Alfieri to Simona Malpezzi, from Marianna Madia to Pina Picierno up to the 'liberals' of LibertàEguale of Enrico Morando, Giorgio Tonini and Stefano Ceccanti); on the other hand, there is the new leadership intent (Schlein's words) on 'sentimentally reconnecting' with the world of work and with its trade union of reference in order to imprint a definitive left turn on the political line. Even glossing over the fact that the effect of the referendum, if it passed, would not be the return to Article 18 of the old Workers' Statute but rather the return to the Monti reform, which is even worse than the current one in terms of dismissals (maximum 24 months' pay instead of the current 36 as compensation).

In the meantime, the quorum of 50% plus one of the eligible voters seems more and more a mirage: according to the polls, the number of citizens willing to go to the polls does not reach 40% one month before the vote, and this certainly does not help either the television silence on the appointment, on which Agcom's warning has already arrived, or the invitation of the centre-right bigwigs to desert the polls on the grounds that it is 'an internal showdown within the PD'. Without the pull of differentiated autonomy, it seems difficult that the other issues can bring about a miracle, given that in the last 25 years the quorum has only been hit once (in 2011 on nuclear power and public water). Hence the magic number that has been circulating for a few days between CGIL and Largo del Nazareno: 12 million at the polls. Less than half of the eligible voters, of course, but still the same number of citizens who chose the centre-right in the last general election. It would not be a victory but not a defeat either. And it would be a strong political signal to Prime Minister Meloni. There will then be time for the pushback, as there will be time for reckoning within the PD.