Lega (political party)
Lega, officially named Lega per Salvini Premier, is a right-wing populist political party in Italy led by Matteo Salvini. The LSP is the informal successor of Lega Nord. The LSP was established in December 2017 as the sister party of the LN, active in northern Italy, and as the replacement of Us with Salvini, LN's previous affiliate in central and southern Italy. The new party aimed at offering LN's values and policies to the rest of the country. Some political commentators described the LSP as a parallel party of the LN, with the aim of politically replacing it, also because of its statutory debt of €49 million.
Since January 2020, the LN became mostly inactive and was practically supplanted by the LSP, which is active all around Italy. The LSP came third in the 2018 Italian general election and first in the 2019 European Parliament election in Italy. Like the LN, the LSP is a confederation of regional parties, of which the largest and long-running are Liga Veneta and Lega Lombarda, established in 1980 and 1984, respectively. Despite misgivings within the party's Padanian nationalist faction, the political base of the LSP is in northern Italy, where the party gets most of its support and where it has maintained the traditional autonomist outlook of the LN, especially in Lombardy and Veneto.
In February 2021, the LSP joined the Draghi government of national unity. After a disappointing result in the 2022 Italian general election, the party joined the Meloni government with five ministers, including Giancarlo Giorgetti as minister of Economy and Finance and Salvini as deputy prime minister and minister of Infrastructure and Transport. The LSP also participates in 15 regional governments, including those of the two autonomous provinces. Five regional presidents, including Attilio Fontana, Luca Zaia, and Massimiliano Fedriga, are party members. Fedriga is also the president of the Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces.
History
Background
The Lega Nord was established in 1989 as a federation of six regional parties from northern and north-central Italy, which became the party's founding "national" sections in 1991. Umberto Bossi was the party's founder and later long-time federal secretary. The LN long advocated the transformation of Italy from a unitary state to a federation, fiscal federalism, regionalism and greater regional autonomy, especially for northern regions. At times, the party advocated the secession of the North, which the party referred to as "Padania", and consequently Padanian nationalism. The party always opposed illegal immigration and often adopted Eurosceptic stances, joining the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament in 2019. Throughout its history, the LN formed alliances both with centre-right and centre-left parties, but, in general elections, it was usually part of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition and, occasionally, ran as a stand-alone party. In the North several regions have been led by LN members, including Veneto and Lombardy.In December 2013, Matteo Salvini, a member of the European Parliament and former editor-in-chief of Radio Padania Libera, was elected federal secretary of the LN, after having prevailed over Bossi in a leadership election. To revive a party overwhelmed by scandals and which had reached historical lows in the 2013 Italian general election, Salvini led the LN though dramatic changes, first by re-orienting it toward the European nationalist right. In the run-up of the 2014 European Parliament election, Salvini formed an alliance with the French National Front led by Marine Le Pen, the Dutch Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders and other alike parties on the issues of Euroscepticism, opposition to immigration and sovereigntism, leading to the establishment of the Identity and Democracy Party. The League also started a brief co-operation with CasaPound, a far-right organisation. In December 2014 Salvini launched Us with Salvini, with goal of putting forward LN's issues in central and southern Italy and expanding the party's electorate.
Road to the new party
In the 2017 leadership election, Salvini was confirmed LN's leader, defeating Gianni Fava, from the party's traditionalist wing. The May 2017 federal congress marked the "national" turnaround. In October 2017, Salvini announced that in the 2018 Italian general election the party would be re-branded simply as "Lega" and would field lists also in central-southern Italy. On 14 December 2017, the "Lega per Salvini Premier" party was established by long-time LN member Roberto Calderoli and its constitution was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale. LSP's official goals were the transformation of Italy "into a modern federal state through democratic and electoral methods" and the support of "the freedom and sovereignty of peoples at the European level". LSP's symbol was inspired from Donald Trump's campaign for the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries in the United States: a blue rectangle with the words "Lega per Salvini Premier" in white, surrounded by a thin white frame. A week later, Salvini presented the new electoral logo: the word "Nord" and the Sun of the Alps were removed, while the word "Lega" and the representation of Alberto da Giussano remained, and the slogan "Salvini Premier" was added.In the 2018 general election, the League gained its best-so-far result of 17.4% of the vote, becoming the largest party within the centre-right coalition and establishing itself as the country's third largest political force. After the election, the party formed an alliance with the populist Five Star Movement, which had come first in the election with 32.7% of the vote. The "yellow-green government" was led by Giuseppe Conte, an independent jurist close to the M5S, and included Salvini as minister of the Interior. Since the government's formation, thanks to Salvini's approval as minister, the party was regularly the country's largest party in opinion polls, at around or over 30%. In the 2019 European Parliament election in Italy, the League won 34.3% of the vote, winning for the first time a plurality of the electorate, while the M5S stopped at 17.1%. In August 2019 Salvini announced his intention to leave the coalition with the M5S, and called for a snap general election.
File:Salvini Centinaio Giorgetti.jpg|thumb|right|220px|Salvini, Gian Marco Centinaio, and Giancarlo Giorgetti at the Quirinal Palace after the 2018 election
After successful talks between the M5S and the Democratic Party, the incumbent government was eventually replaced by the second Conte government. The League thus returned into the opposition, together with its electoral allies of the centre-right coalition. During 2019, along with the LN's membership recruitment in the Centre-North, the party launched a parallel drive in the Centre-South for the LSP, practically supplanting NcS. Finally, during a federal congress on 21 December 2019, the party's constitution underwent some major changes, including reduced powers for the federal president, the extension of the federal secretary's and federal council's terms from three to five years, the introduction of "dual membership" and the faculty given to the federal council to grant the use of the party's symbol to other political parties. With the end of its membership drive in August 2020, the LSP became active throughout Italy. The LN, unable to be dissolved because of its burden of €49 million debt to the Italian state, was instead formally kept alive, while its membership cards were donated to former activists.
2020 regional elections
Salvini's popularity was supposed to create better chances for the League to continue its winning streak in regional elections, particularly in Emilia-Romagna, a large region long-governed by the centre-left coalition. However, in the 2020 Emilia-Romagna regional election the party's candidate, Lucia Borgonzoni, stopped at 43.6% of the vote and was defeated by incumbent president Stefano Bonaccini. The League's list obtained 32.0% and came second after the PD. The LSP, which had already peaked in opinion polls after quitting the yellow-green government, continued a slow decline in opinion polls and would be eventually eclipsed both by the PD and the FdI during 2021.In the 2020 Venetian regional election, Luca Zaia, whose popularity was the result of a long-term focus on his home-region Veneto, was re-elected for a third consecutive term with 76.8% of the vote; Liga Veneta fielded two lists, including the League's official one and Zaia's personal list, which obtained 16.9% and 44.6%, respectively. In the Tuscan regional election, League's candidate Susanna Ceccardi was defeated in her bid to become president of Tuscany. The fact that the League had grown electorally only in Veneto and had lost appeal in other regions started to weaken Salvini's leadership, which was more or less silently contested by the "centrist" wing of the party formed by Giancarlo Giorgetti, Zaia and all of the party's regional presidents, from Lombardy's Attilio Fontana to Friuli-Venezia Giulia's Massimiliano Fedriga, who would become president of the Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces in 2021.
Draghi national unity government
In January 2021, Conte's second government fell after losing support from Matteo Renzi's Italia Viva party. Subsequently, President Sergio Mattarella appointed Mario Draghi to form a cabinet, which won support from the League, the M5S, the PD and FI. The League entered the new government with three high-profile ministers from the party's "centrist" wing: Giorgetti, the architect of the party's pro-Europeanist turn and close friend of Draghi, as minister of Economic Development, Massimo Garavaglia as minister of Tourism and Erika Stefani as minister for Disabilities. The party's support for Draghi's government stood in contrast to its Eurosceptic stances.In June 2021, Salvini proposed a federation with FI and other centre-right parties supporting Draghi, which has so far went nowhere, as well as a campaign for six referendums on justice along with the liberal Radical Party. In February 2022 five of the six referendums were approved by Italy's Constitutional Court, opening the way for a popular vote by June.
In the run-up of the 2022 Italian local elections, the party launched a new organisation named Italy First in southern Italy. The League ran under the "Italy First" banner in most southern cities and in the 2022 Sicilian regional election. According to Calderoli, who registered the new symbol on Salvini's behalf, Italy First could eventually become a new political party, possibly including also FI and other centrist parties. However, as the notion of replacing the League's symbol also in northern Italy was criticised by several party members, especially in Veneto, Calderoli ruled it out.