Romeo’s Lombard challenge, "the League goes back to talking about the North"

The north wind shakes the party led by Matteo Salvini. In the setting of the Sheraton Hotel in Milan, the congress of the Lombard League elected by acclamation Massimiliano Romeo current leader of the Senate, as secretary. After the withdrawals of Cristian Invernizzi and Luca Toccalini in recent days, Romeo was the only candidate left and succeeds coordinator Fabrizio Cecchetti. His was not a tender intervention towards the party line. Addressing Salvini directly, he was keen to clarify: “You know that I have always been loyal to you”, but “if we no longer talk about the north, we won’t get the votes in the north”. At these words, one left the room standing ovation.

Fontana: “The problem of the North is increasingly present”

Even the Lombard governor, Attilio Fontanahe had previously underlined: “If I am here, I am here to fight in favor of Lombardy and in favor of the North. Because the problem of the North is there, and is increasingly present. We cannot pretend that it is something that has been overcome”. And “there are also some enemies in the League because when I see certain amendments, signed by some representatives of other areas, which are to the detriment of Lombardy I get pissed off like a beast”.

After having claimed the path of his candidacy, “if we have arrived this far it is because we deserved it with a year and a half of work in the area”, Romeo said he had the “maximum respect for the outgoing regional secretariat”, adding however : “It is right that the season of nominations and commissionerships ends once and for all, which must be the exception and not the rule”. He also pointed the finger at too many “courtyard squabbles, the obsessive pursuit of armchairs and armchairs”.

Decided the invitation to recover the political line of the League of ‘origins’: “In the collective imagination the right will always be represented by Meloni. This continuous search for a new political positioning and forgetting to cultivate our political space is inexplicable. The League represents the movement of the territory in the eyes of the citizens, we got the votes everywhere This must be the idea: let’s take back our identity, our true identity, then we can talk about issues of the right, left or center.”

On the fact that, after the election as Lombard secretary, Romeo could maintain his position as group leader in the Senate, before the start of the congress Salvini replied: “I don’t know, one thing at a time, we’ll talk about it later”. Then the Northern League leader spoke from the stage, immediately after Romeo’s speech: “Criticizing is easy, choosing is less easy. I also remember in recent years: ‘we must leave the government with the M5s’, done. ‘We must enter in the Draghi government”, done. I won’t go into what I thought. Sometimes I have made choices of which I was 100%, 99% convinced, sometimes less”. Salvini then wished Romeo to never find himself “in the situation in which he makes choices that are asked of him by someone who then when it’s about being accountable for the choices made”, perhaps he says “I wasn’t there and if I was I was asleep”. However “victories have 6 thousand fathers, moments of difficulty are experienced alone”.

Salvini claims the choice of the national movement

Salvini also asked for unity from the party, because “we are under attack. When you are under attack the only thing you cannot afford is to argue in your camp”. For the secretary “the thing that most damages the League is not the cannon fire from outside, but the background noise and internal controversies”. In any case, he claimed, “I will never go back on a choice: it can be modulated, the ways can be seen, but the choice of a national movement is right for the country and useful for Lombardy”. Going in another direction would mean “supporting other national parties” or “the club of those who come to talk about the north to people who risk going to jail for the north”.

Several times both Romeo and Salvini had to stop due to the prolonged applause of the congressmen. The deputy prime minister was also moved, interrupting his speech for a few seconds, when he spoke about the Open Arms process. The owner of the Economy, Giancarlo Giorgettipresent like all the Lombard ministers of the League, observed: “We need two things. A madman, a leader because we are like that and we are different from other parties. And the leader must be respected. And we need to be a community, a League, in solidarity with each other. Otherwise the others will win, but if we do this we will win.”