Barring last-minute surprises, it would seem that the government has done it. We will most likely have a sovereign-populist government presided over by a lawyer expert in contracts but lacking the authority and autonomy necessary to carry out this role. An unprecedented in the history of republican Italy, which does not bode well for the country.
The reference to the Monti government as a precedent (both unelected, both technicians) does not hold up, and not only because of the different stature of the two men (the former a former European commissioner, the latter without any political experience) but, above all, because Monti no one let anyone dictate the program of his government, while Giuseppe Conte is called upon to execute a contract that others have written and signed for him without even consulting him.
But, more than the anomaly of the government that is about to be born (we will see the list of ministers later, even if the idea of giving Infrastructures a No Tav, No Triv and No Tap does not bode well) what owes most worry is the lack of real opposition to this government. This is very serious and also very dangerous.
In England, alongside the "Queen's government" there must also be "Her Majesty's opposition", whose role is no less important than that of the government. Without opposition, democracy simply doesn't work. Today's political urgency is therefore to build an opposition to the populist-sovereign government that is the strongest, clearest and most determined possible.
Forza Italy goes through a phase of estrangement. Salvini, leader of the centre-right coalition, has left his coalition to start his own business. As he had his followers say, the clash today is no longer between the centre-right and the centre-left but between the people and the elites and he, Salvini, intends to represent, together with the 5 stars, the people, while he leaves Forza Italia and the Pd with that of represent the elites.
So, goodbye to Berlusconi, who, if he does not want to disappear, must now try to relocate the moderate, popular and pro-European right to its own terrain, which is that of the European People's Party.
Ma also the Pd he is experiencing a profound existential crisis and, if possible, even more difficult to overcome than that of the moderates. The vote placed him in opposition. Luckily for him, Renzi's outstretched leg intervention prevented him from committing suicide, which would certainly have happened if he had agreed to support the 5-star attempt to form the government. But, now, the Democratic Party must clearly state what kind of opposition it wants to do and with whom it intends to do it.
To this the leaders of the Democratic Party have not yet given a clear answer and the time to give it (even after the flop of the national assembly) is running out. Yet it should be clear to the leaders of that party that the only possible opposition to a populist, Eurosceptic and justicialist government is a pro-European, reformist and guarantor opposition.
The watershed is not, as Salvini and di Maio think, between the people and the elites or even between the center-right and the center-left. The watershed is between open and closed society, between the Europe of France, Germany and Spain and that of Visegrad, between the free market and statism, between the opening of borders and protectionism, between guaranteeism and justicialism, between economic and social reforms and welfarism, between policies for growth and "happy degrowth", between innovation and the rejection of modernity, between representative democracy and plebiscitarism, between the autonomy of Parliament and MPs and their subordination to the leaders party or even to forces external to Parliament itself.
It is certainly true that the political categories of the 900s no longer define current reality and do not help us decipher it, but there are principles and values such as the "Rule of law", such as "Habeas corpus", such as the rights of man, such as the rules of democracy, such as the separation of powers, such as the value of education and science and others which are essential for making politics and for making the choices necessary for the purposes of development and greater social equality.
Contempt for parties and ideologies has turned, in the language of Salvini and Di Maio, intohatred of politics as such, in the refusal of confrontation and mediation and in the indifference to merit (one is worth one). In this way they pave the way for demagogic policies which, throughout history, have brought the countries that have adopted them to ruin.
The opposition must place itself clearly on the terrain of fight against this anti-democratic drift, must stand up for those values that populism threatens. The Democratic Party, if it does not want to disappear, must quickly descend on this terrain and promote the birth of a political movement that embodies the desire for democratic and reformist revenge which has far from disappeared in the country.
It means this that will it be necessary to overcome the Pd? That something similar to what Emmanuel Macron has done in France and David Milliband is trying to do in England should be done in Italy? Probably yes. The traditional parties have represented the vehicle that has allowed politics to express itself (as the Americans say: no democracy without politics, no politics without parties) but what was true yesterday may no longer be true today. A valid tool in post-war Italy today may no longer be valid.
The forms in which politics is expressed can change, but what can never fail is the need for politics. What democratic political and cultural forces must therefore try to do is to find the institutional and organizational forms that allow reformist politics to express itself to the maximum of its possibilities.
Without politics there is no democracy, but without reforms there is no development. Only if it places itself on this terrain can the Democratic Party still make a valid contribution to overcoming the political crisis into which we have plunged and which the new government does not seem to be able to guarantee.
