Sensing the air of a difficult electoral result, Pd and Cinque Stelle - and with them the premier Giuseppe Conte - have not missed an opportunity to warn that today's vote in Umbria - contrary to what Matteo Salvini and the center-right line-up claims - it will not be a referendum on the government but a local test. Zingaretti, Di Maio and Conte are not entirely wrong because the inhabitants of the whole of Umbria are equal to those of Lecce or a district of Rome.
But, with all this, it cannot be said that their reasoning is flawless. There is a photo to contradict this, that of the final rally in Narni, where together with three of the four political leaders of the government majority (Nicola Zingaretti, Luigi Di Maio and Roberto Speranza) there is no leader of Italia Viva, Matteo Renzi, and instead there is Prime Minister Conte.
If the Umbrian vote is a local vote, in what capacity did Conte participate in the final rally? And why wasn't Renzi, who paved the way for the birth of this government in August, before Zingaretti, initially oriented towards early elections that would have handed over "full powers" over Italy to Salvini's sovereignty, woke up?
Whatever the Umbrian result, it is unlikely that the current government will be shaken by it more than the fibrillation and misunderstandings (Ilva in primis) that run through it every day. However, Renzi's skilful unmarking and Conte's cumbersome presence in Narni send a very clear signal about Umbria's vote. That of Umbria will not be a national test but a test - as is somehow evident from the words of the Conte himself in Narni - it certainly is: it is a first electoral test on the feasibility of the common house project between the Democratic Party and the Five Stars. If then the project means joint electoral lists in the other regions or in the next general elections or even a merger of the two political forces (+ Leu) only time will tell.
“The project – explained Conte in the final rally in Narni – has just started and will stabilize more and more. We will go on until 2023 and beyond”. What is certain so far is that in this "wide field" dreamed of by Conte (more than by Di Maio) and by Zingaretti there will be no Italia Viva which is moving in a completely different direction. And that Renzi imagines as a transversal force to Macron capable of attracting energies from right and left to give life to a dynamic, reforming and pro-European policy without any confusion with the populism of the Five Stars and with the adverse to the disastrous sovereignty of Salvini and Meloni.
