Lega Nord
Lega Nord, whose complete name is Lega Nord per l'Indipendenza della Padania, is a right-wing, federalist, populist and conservative political party in Italy. In the run-up to the 2018 general election, the party was rebranded as Lega, without changing its official name. The party was nonetheless frequently referred to only as "Lega" even before the rebranding, and informally as the Carroccio. The party's latest elected leader was Matteo Salvini.
In 1989, the LN was established as a federation of six regional parties from northern and north-central Italy, which became the party's founding "national" sections in 1991. The party's founder and long-time federal secretary was Umberto Bossi, now federal president. The LN has advocated the transformation of Italy from a unitary to a federal state, fiscal federalism, regionalism and greater regional autonomy, especially for northern regions. At times, the party has advocated the secession of northern Italy, which the party has referred to as "Padania", and, thus, Padanian nationalism. The party has always opposed illegal immigration and often adopted Eurosceptic stances.
Since 31 January 2020, through a mandate given by the federal council, the party has been managed by commissioner Igor Iezzi. The LN was thus eclipsed by the Lega per Salvini Premier, until that moment active as the central and southern Italian branch of the party established by Salvini himself in the 2010s, and since 2020 throughout all of Italy. Following the emergence of LSP, the original LN is practically inactive and its former "national" sections have become "regional" sections of the LSP.
History
Precursors and foundation
At the 1983 general election, Liga Veneta elected a deputy, Achille Tramarin; and a senator, Graziano Girardi. At the 1987 general election, another regional party, Lega Lombarda gained national prominence when its leader Umberto Bossi was elected to the Italian Senate. The two parties, along with other regionalist outfits, ran as Alleanza Nord during the 1989 European Parliament election, gaining 1.8% of the vote.Lega Nord, which was first launched as a reform of Alleanza Nord in December 1989, was officially established as a party in February 1991 through the merger of various regional parties, notably including Lega Lombarda and Liga Veneta. These continue to exist as "national sections" of the main party, which presents itself in regional and local contests as "Lega Lombarda–Lega Nord", "Liga Veneta–Lega Nord", "Lega Nord–Piemont" and so on.
The foundational inspiration for the original regional parties and the unified party was the medieval political alliance of northern Italy known as the Lombard League, the consciousness that the northern ethnicities of the Italian peninsula are descendants of Gaulish and Lombardic populations—historically, northern Italians were called "Lombards" and the entire northern portion of the peninsula was called "Lombardy"—and that they are ethnically different from the Greco-Roman population of the central-southern half of the peninsula. The Lega Nord party conveyed resentment against Rome's centralism and the Italian government, common in northern Italy as many northerners felt that the government wasted resources collected mostly from northerners' taxes, especially for sustaining the economies of Rome and southern Italy. Resentment against illegal immigrants was also exploited. The party's electoral successes began approximately at a time when public disillusionment with the established political parties was at its height: the Tangentopoli corruption scandals, which involved most of the established parties, broke out from 1992 onwards. Contrary to what many pundits predicted at the beginning of the 1990s, Lega Nord became a stable force in the Italian political scene.
Lega Nord's first electoral breakthrough was at the 1990 regional elections, but it was with the 1992 general election that the party emerged as a leading political actor. Having gained 8.7% of the vote, 56 deputies and 26 senators, it became the fourth largest party of the country and within the Italian Parliament. In 1993, Marco Formentini was elected mayor of Milan, the party won 49.3% in the provincial election of Varese and by the end of the year—before Silvio Berlusconi launched his own political career and party—it was estimated around 16–18% in electoral surveys.
First alliance with Berlusconi
In early 1994, some days before the announcement of the Bossi–Berlusconi pact which led to the formation of the Pole of Freedoms, Roberto Maroni, Bossi's number two, signed an agreement with Mario Segni's centrist Pact for Italy, which was later cancelled.The party thus fought the 1994 general election in alliance with Berlusconi's Forza Italia within the Pole of Freedoms coalition. Lega Nord gained just 8.4% of the vote, but thanks to a generous division of candidacies in Northern single-seats constituencies its parliamentary representation was almost doubled to 117 deputies and 56 senators. The position of President Chamber of Deputies was thus given to a LN member, Irene Pivetti, a young woman hailing from the Catholic faction of the party.
After the election, the League joined FI, National Alliance and the Christian Democratic Centre to form a coalition government under Berlusconi and the party obtained five ministries in Berlusconi's first cabinet: Interior for Roberto Maroni, Budget for Giancarlo Pagliarini, Industry for Vito Gnutti, European affairs for Domenico Comino and Institutional Reforms for Francesco Speroni. However, the alliance with Berlusconi and the government itself were both short-lived: the latter collapsed before the end of the year, with the League being instrumental in its demise.
The last straw was a proposed pension reform, which would have hurt some of the key constituencies of the LN, but the government was never a cohesive one and relations among coalition partners, especially those between the LN and the centralist AN, were quite tense all the time. When Bossi finally decided to withdraw from the government in December, Maroni vocally disagreed and walked out.
In January 1995, the League gave a vote of confidence to the newly formed cabinet led by Lamberto Dini, along with the Italian People's Party and the Democratic Party of the Left. This caused several splinter groups to leave the party, including the Federalist Party of Gianfranco Miglio, the Federalists and Liberal Democrats of Franco Rocchetta, Lucio Malan and Furio Gubetti and the Federalist Italian League of Luigi Negri and Sergio Cappelli. All these groups later merged into FI while a few other MPs, including Pierluigi Petrini, floor leader in the Chamber of Deputies, joined the centre-left. By 1996, a total of 40 deputies and 17 senators had left the party while Maroni had instead returned to the party's fold after months of coldness with Bossi.
Between 1995 and 1998, Lega Nord joined centre-left governing coalitions in many local contexts, notably including the Province of Padua to the city of Udine.
Padanian separatism
After a big success at the 1996 general election, its best result so far, Lega Nord announced that it wanted the secession of northern Italy under the name of Padania. On 13 September 1996, Bossi took an ampoule of water from the springs of the Po River, which was poured into the sea of Venice two days later as a symbolic act of birth of the new nation. The Po River was deified by the party and the "Ampoule Rite" was conducted as a yearly Pagan rite by the party's leaders until the 2010s; in its early phase, the party supported a Celtic Druidic form of religion against Roman Catholicism and some party leaders married with Druidic rites. The party gave "Padania", previously referring to the Po Valley, a broader meaning covering entire Northern Italy that has steadily gained currency, at least among its followers. The party even organised a referendum on independence and elections for a Padanian Parliament.The years between 1996 and 1998 were particularly good for the League, which was the largest party in many provinces of northern Italy and was able to prevail in single-seat constituencies and provincial elections by running alone against both the centre-right and the centre-left. The party also tried to expand its reach through a number of Padanian-styled associations and media endeavours, notably including La Padania daily, Il Sole delle Alpi weekly, the Lega Nord Flash periodical, the TelePadania TV channel, the Radio Padania Libera and the Bruno Salvadori publishing house.
However, after the 1996 election, which Lega Nord had fought outside the two big coalitions, the differences between those who supported a new alliance with Berlusconi and those who preferred to enter Romano Prodi's Olive Tree re-emerged. A total of 15 deputies and 9 senators left the party to join either centre-right or centre-left parties. Pivetti left a few months after the election. Comencini left in 1998 to launch Liga Veneta Repubblica with the mid-term goal of joining forces with FI in Veneto. Gnutti and Comino were expelled in 1999 after they had formed local alliances with the centre-right. Formentini also left in 1999 in order to join Prodi's Democrats.
As a result, the party suffered a huge setback at the 1999 European Parliament election in which it garnered a mere 4.5% of the vote. Since then, the League de-emphasised demands for independence in order to rather focus on devolution and federal reform, paving the way for a return to coalition politics.
House of Freedoms
After the defeat at the 1999 European Parliament election, senior members of the party thought it was not possible to achieve anything if the party continued to stay outside the two big coalitions. Some, including Maroni, who despite 1994–1995 row with Bossi had always been left-leaning in the heart, preferred an alliance with the centre-left. Bossi asked Maroni to negotiate an agreement with Massimo D'Alema, who had described Lega Nord as "a rib of the left". These talks were successful and Maroni was indicated as the joint candidate for President of Lombardy for the 2000 regional election. Despite this, Bossi decided instead to approach Berlusconi, who was the front-runner in the upcoming 2001 general election. The centre-right coalition won the 2000 regional elections and the League entered the regional governments of Lombardy, Veneto, Piedmont and Liguria.One year later, Lega Nord was part of Berlusconi's House of Freedoms in the 2001 general election. According to its leader, the alliance was a "broad democratic arch, composed of the democratic right, namely AN, the great democratic centre, namely Forza Italia, CCD and CDU, and the democratic left represented by the League, the New PSI, the PRI and, at least I hope so, Cossiga".
The coalition won handily the election, but the LN was further reduced to 3.9% while being returned in Parliament thanks to the victories scored by the League members in single-seat constituencies. In 2001–2006, although severely reduced in its parliamentary representation, the party controlled three key ministries: Justice with Roberto Castelli, Labour and Social affairs with Roberto Maroni and Institutional Reforms and Devolution with Umberto Bossi. In March 2004, Bossi suffered a stroke that led many to question over the party's survival, but that ultimately confirmed Lega Nord's strength due to a very organised structure and a cohesive set of leaders.
In government, the LN was widely considered the staunchest ally of Berlusconi and formed the so-called "axis of the North" along with FI through the special relationship between Bossi, Berlusconi and Giulio Tremonti while AN and the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats, the party emerged from the merger of the CCD and the CDU in late 2002, became the natural representatives of Southern interests.
During the five years in government with the centre-right, the Parliament passed an important constitutional reform, which included federalism and more powers for the Prime Minister. The alliance that Lega Nord forged with the Movement for Autonomy and the Sardinian Action Party for the 2006 general election was not successful in convincing Southern voters to approve the reform, which was rejected in the 2006 constitutional referendum.