British far-right leader from Salvini to MIT, it's a storm. Tajani: Robinson incompatible with my values

"It was an honour for me to shake hands with a man I have looked up to since the beginning of my activism, a brave leader, a strong man of Europe, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini." The picture posted on X by Tommy Robinson, 42-year-old animator of the UK's anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic extra-right, as he smiles and shakes hands with the League leader at the Ministry of Transport, becomes a case study.

The left revolts. 'It is extremely serious that an institutional venue is being used to legitimise racist exponents of international neo-fascism. Matteo Salvini's meeting at the MIT with Tommy Robinson - a leader of the British extreme right, racist and supremacist, with a long record of violence and criminal convictions - represents a further step in the League's involution,' attacks Matteo Orfini (PD), a member of the Chamber's Culture Commission, commenting on the far-right leader Tommy Robinson's tweet about the meeting.

'An episode that is not isolated,' Orfini continued. Added to this is the press conference promoted by the League in the Chamber of Deputies next week, with the participation of exponents traceable to neo-fascist and naziskin circles. A worrying thread running through political initiatives that are increasingly incompatible with republican values'.

Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani also intervened. Tommy Robinson 'is incompatible with my values. I will not meet him,' said Forza Italia secretary Antonio Tajani, in Milan for an event of his party at the Manzoni Theatre. Tajani added: 'Salvini sees who he wants, I will not meet him. He does his, we do ours'.

According to the PD exponents, Robinson is not a political interlocutor: he is a neo-fascist agitator, Putin supporter, protagonist of the anti-migrant riots and reference point for European extremist networks. "Our Constitution is fiercely anti-fascist: I remind the Minister of Transport Matteo Salvini, who perhaps forgot this when he invited an English neo-Nazi character to an institutional venue, who goes against all the democratic principles contained in the charter and who goes far beyond anti-constitutional racism,' Chiara Gribaudo, vice-president of the Democratic Party, reiterated. Criticism also came from Avs: 'The meeting between Matteo Salvini and Tommy Robinson, former member of the British National Party, an anti-Semitic and Holocaust denier party, leader of the English Defence League, a racist and supremacist movement, is intolerable. Robinson has been convicted and imprisoned for violence against a police officer, brawling, drugs, fraud and violation of court orders and is politically close to Putin,' said Angelo Bonelli, AVS MP and co-spokesperson of Green Europe.