Matteo Salvini: the master campaigner counts cost of strategic errors

Less than a month ago, Matteo Salvini was in his element, drinking mojitos, DJing and posing for countless selfies at Papeete, his favourite beach club in the seaside resort town of Milano Marittima. He had good reason for his ebullient mood: his far-right League party in Italy was nearing 39% in the polls.

Now Salvini is licking his wounds after a gambit to collapse the government and force snap elections backfired, not only derailing his plans to become prime minister but pushing the League out of power and costing the party about six percentage points in the polls.

In an unusually turbulent period even by the standards of Italian politics, the League’s former coalition partner, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), retaliated to being dumped by Salvini by embracing the centre-left Democratic party (PD), traditionally a staunch rival. The two parties are now endeavouring to carve out a new parliamentary majority, led by Giuseppe Conte, who resigned as prime minister last week with a stinging attack on Salvini.

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