The world is made up of stairs, some go down and some go up. Some gain, some lose. The proverb is taken from a saying by Terence: “Omnium rerum, heus, vicissitudo est”. But going up or down in what sense? For FIRSTonline goes up who excels professionally, who has a forward-looking vision of the future and who has an indisputable moral rigour. Those who do not meet even one of these requirements go down. These are the interpretative grids that inspire our new Up & Down column.

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That's who goes up

Let's face it: the President of the Napoli, Aurelius De Laurentiis, a great funny guy has never been and is not. He's a bit of a braggart, which in Milan they call bauscia, like the Berlusconi first way, always convinced that he knows better. However, when one wins a scudetto with great merit and well in advance, which Naples has not had since the days of Maradona, all that remains is to do one thing: take off your hat. It's true, the Scudetto was won by the team and a coach like Luciano created it Spalletti who had seen (two) championships only in his Russian adventure in St. Petersburg and whose real ability to manage the champions was discussed – since the days of the tussles with Totti. But a large part of the credit for the victory goes to De Laurentiis who has long been contested by the fans and even threatened with death by organized crime. De Laurentiis never gave up, erased his fame as a coach-eater, and finally won. The Scudetto is the film that he did best in his entire life as a film producer.

For a woman to break the glass ceiling is never easy. Let alone in a large international group like Vodafone, which has a restless shareholder base full of competitors like Iliad and Liberty Global, and let alone if this woman is an Italian manager. Sometimes, however, miracles exist and it is certainly one of these that on April 27 brought with full merit on the chair of CEO of Vodafone Group Roman by birth but Bocconian by education Margaret of the Valley, former interim CEO after Nick's traumatic firing Read. Della Valle was and will temporarily remain CFO of the entire Group, a position that brought her into the group of the 15 most important female CFOs of the FTSE 100. But why did the shareholders of the British public company choose her as CEO? "For the speed and decisiveness with which you initiated the necessary transformation of Vodafone" explained the President Jean-Francois van Boxmeer. Any manager would rightly be flattered by these words, a woman manager is flattered twice, an Italian manager at least three times. Great Margaret.

Gianni drum, the volcanic and creative founder and CEO of Tip, worked on May Day. And the fruits were seen after a few hours. On 2 May Tamburi informed the market that it had put 72 million euros on the table and that it had acquired 50,7% of Investindesign which in turn holds the majority stake in Italian Design Brands for which a takeover bid was then launched which will bring the value of the economic capital from the initial 220 million to 293 million euros. Rapid and ingenious operation, which Tamburi, who grew up in the Euromobiliare school of Guido Roberto Vitale, carried out in a flash and which will allow him to bring design into MY BAG. “It is an act of trust in Italy” commented the owner of Tip. Chapeau.

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And here's who comes down

Perhaps it was better that he fulfilled his dream of opening a wine shop in Siena because as French interior minister Gérald Darmanin it just makes trouble. The new diplomatic incident with theItaly on Friday evening it was all provoked by his rash accusations of "incapacity" and resemblance to the The Pen launched at Prime Minister Giorgia's address Melons. Darmanin is not new to gaffes and everyone remembers what he did in April 2018, when, as Minister of Customs at altitude Sarkozy, prompted the French agents to break into the Bardonecchia station to chase a Nigerian passenger on the TGV. It is probable that Darmanin, who dreams of the Elysée, is moved by purely internal political reasons, both to divert attention from the clash over pensions and to oppose Le Pen on immigration, but to say that he moves like an elephant in a glassware is an understatement. His departure blew up the meeting between the Italian and French foreign ministers, causing the embarrassment of the Government of Macron which induced the very good French minister, Catherine Column and then the premier Elisabeth Borne to express all her displeasure to our minister Antonio Tajani. She condemns without appeal for Darmanin: down from the tower.

The fool remedied by sindacati and primarily from Mauritius Landini on the cut of the tax wedge on the eve of May Day it is worthy of an anthology or a horror film: it protests because the cut is too timid but – as Il Foglio wittily observed – it is 2 points more than what the unions originally asked for. But the own goal on wedge cannot obscure Landini's big shot on the reform of the Constitution except for the CGIL it must not be touched even in the clearly outdated parts. “We – thundered Landini puffing up his chest at the May Day rally in Potenza – have always opposed those who wanted to change the Constitution, from Berlusconi a Renzi“. Too bad they weren't the same thing and having sunk Renzi's constitutional reform in the 2016 referendum meant keeping the Senate as a duplicate of the Chamber, keeping the Provinces, keeping the Cnel and preventing strategic decisions on telecommunications and energy from returning, as it would be obviously, to the Government rather than remaining in the hands of the Regions. Once upon a time those who didn't want to change anything called them conservatives. How should we define Landini? Surely his immobility pushes him into the dust. Now the question is: will Landini also drag the new secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, into the dust? We will understand more when the table of constitutional reforms wanted by Meloni opens.

It's not all his fault, having come to Downing Street only a few months ago, but the beating in Thursday's local elections in England alone is a bad blow for the new British prime minister Rishi sunak. For Tories it was a catastrophe: over a thousand seats lost in one go to the great joy of the Liberal Democrats and Labor who are beginning to savor the taste of a sensational return to government when the general elections arrive in 18 months. The vice president of a major international investment bank wittily points out: "The problem is not understanding whether the Labor di Keir Starmer they will win but if they lose the conservatives, who have a hard core that is difficult to scratch". But Thursday's local vote clearly shows that the Tories have lost the confidence of voters and the latest projections put Labor at 35% and the Conservatives at 26%. Finally the British begin to understand that the Brexit it was just a dangerous illusion and that the economic crisis, double-digit inflation and the collapse of public services – as Nicol Degli Innocenti shrewdly notes in the Sole 24 Ore – bite and how. Eighteen months however are long and anything can still happen but for now Sunak is rolling down the ladder and Labor hopes, having understood long ago that it is not with Jeremy's maximalism Corbyn back to Downing Street.