The left-wing Italian Democratic Party (PD) could lose its historic stomping ground of Tuscany after Meloni’s right-wing coalition romped home in various municipal elections this month in the cities of Siena, Pisa, and Massa.
It is strongly suspected that the entire region could flip to the Right by 2025. Tuscany is one of just four out of the twenty electoral regions in Italy not dominated by the right-wing coalition led by the ruling Fratelli d’Italia party and other parties extending further right.
The string of losses is bad news for the Democratic Party’s newly elected uber-progressive leader Elly Schlein who, contrary to initial expectations, is only hastening the party’s demise as a serious force in Italian politics due to appearances of being elitist in the eyes of working-class voters.
The traditional postwar catchall party of the Italian Left, PD has in recent elections bled votes to the Right which has been able to tap into working-class discontent through a coordinated voting pact and populist messaging.
PD officials openly lament the crumbling of the party’s ‘red wall’ of proletariat supporters despite early optimism that the election of former Obama campaign staffer Elly Schlein to the helm of the party could energise their declining fortunes.
Initially heralded as an antidote to Meloni, Schlein has so far been a lacklustre flop for the PD. One mayoral candidate in Vicenza went so far as refusing to share the same platform with his new party leader for fear of losing popularity.
Schlein, a constitutional lawyer with triple American, Swiss, and Italian citizenship, lost credibility early on in her tenure after admitting to employing an expensive personal assistant to run errands, reinforcing the view that her party was losing touch with its working-class roots.
Party officials fear that Schlein’s overemphasis on progressive social issues—nevermind support of mass migration—is alienating the party’s rank and file. One insider, speaking anonymously to The Guardian, said the PD was facing its own “Jeremy Corbyn moment.”
Schlein evoked particular anger among the party’s top brass for conducting negotiations with the leader of the populist Five Star Movement Giuseppe Conte, in the hopes of creating an anti-Meloni coalition—an overturePD officials said merely displayed weakness on her part.
Right-wing pundits have already jumped on Schlein’s awkward demeanour and elite background to turn her into a political punching bag, in contrast to Meloni’s general positive personal image, as PD representatives air their disquiet.
The Italian Left fears a repeat of what has happened recently in Greece and Spain as alliances of the hard- and centre-right muscle socialist out of space long dominated by established left-wing parties. PD officials fear a return of the explicitly neo-fascist right in Italian politics.
This was exemplified in mayoral elections for the Tuscan town of Lucca where the PDs were unseated after support from the former leader of the neo-fascist CasaPound group tipped the Right over the electoral line as the far-right rallied working-class voters.
Despite remaining Italy’s second-largest party, the PD has experienced a significant slump in polling the past year as its lost power in various regional councils.
