The day after Matteo Renzi's withdrawal, who withdrew the Italia Viva delegation from the government, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte goes up to the Quirinale but he does not resign and – not without some gaffes on social media – is preparing to appear in Parliament on Monday, looking here and there for a dozen supporters (how to call them? “Responsible” or new Scilipoti?) to gain trust by shoring up his majority. An operation that has undoubted transformist connotations and which risks enlisting a Brancaleone army but which this time has also been cleared through customs by the Democratic Party which, at least for now, unites around Conte and hopes to definitively close the accounts with Renzi, defined as "unreliable" only by the Five Stars but also by the Pd secretary, Nicola Zingaretti.
The head of the Democratic Party delegation to the government, Dario Franceschini, who always has a long eye on theelection of the President of the Republic next year and who has therefore been courting Conte and the Five Stars for some time to reserve their consents, has tried to legitimize attempts to gather any dissident parliamentarians from the opposition or from Italia Viva. But it won't be an easy task. For at least three reasons.
In the first place because it is not enough to collect a few defectors but it is really necessary to put together a numerical majority even in the Senate and without IV knowing that the margins are narrow. Secondly, because the right will not stand by and are preparing for a counter-offensive by hunting for defectors especially in the ranks of the Five Stars. Thirdly, if the operation of the pro-Conte defectors were to go through, it is quite clear that, although it is certainly legitimate, it would not be a question of a politically crystalline operation and even less of a broad scope but which would closely resemble a bargaining. It is all too easy to imagine right now that political controversies will be wasted and that there will be a tussle in Parliament. Even if twists and turns are the order of the day.
