The current situation of the centre-left in Italy is facing significant challenges
- Meloni consolidates her leadership after a thousand days in government
- Regional dominance strengthens the centre-right
- No credibility or strategy
- Schlein: an unconvincing choice
- The markets reward Meloni's stability
- Meloni, favourite to win another term
Meloni consolidates her leadership after a thousand days in government
This period has given Meloni not only the opportunity to join the select ‘club’ of those who have presided over a government for more than 1,000 days (so far Berlusconi twice, Craxi once and Renzi once), but has also clearly consolidated her political leadership. This is due in part to several of her successes (which we will discuss later), the lack of competition in her area of the parliamentary spectrum (neither Antonio Tajani nor Matteo Salvini are rivals for her), but also, and perhaps more importantly, the serious crisis of the centre-left in Italy.
Because, with only two years to go before the end of the current legislature, we are facing a situation not seen since the days of “Tangentopoli” (February 1992): for the first time, there may not be an alternation between the centre-right and the centre-left, but rather the centre-right may serve two consecutive terms. And we say this with polls in hand: Meloni, Salvini and Tajani together account for around 50% of the vote, while the centre-left parties as a whole barely exceed 40%.
Regional dominance strengthens the centre-right
Between now and the end of the year, we have regional government elections: on the last weekend of September, the centre-right won in both Le Marche and Valle d'Aosta, and will almost certainly do so in Veneto as well. For its part, the centre-left seems assured of victory in Campania, Puglia and Tuscany, three regions where it has already been in power for five years or more. But the reality is that, while the centre-right coalition is perfectly assembled, with a leader (Meloni) whom no one disputes, the centre-left, on the other hand, has too many parties and too few voters.
A reasonably compact centre-left should consist of three parties: the Green and Left Alliance (which includes communists and environmentalists), the Democratic Party (by far the most important) and a third party representing the more moderate wing of the centre-left.
Instead, we find that, in addition to AVS and the Democratic Party, there is also the Five Star Movement; Italia Viva, Azione; and Piu Europa. These are, in essence, four parties that are impossible to “pin down”.
Let's start with the Five Star Movement. What was an ‘anti-politics’ party between 2009 and 2018 reached its peak in March of this year: 32.6% of Italians voted for it, making it the party with the highest level of support (the second was the Democratic Party, with 18.8% of the vote). It agreed to form a coalition with Salvini's League, signing a pompously named ‘government contract’ that Salvini blew up a year later in an attempt to call early elections. However, before that, Five Star signed two decrees on security that supported a very harsh anti-immigration policy championed by Matteo Salvini (who was already saying ‘Italy for Italians’ at the time).
Once it was decided to form a new government (September 2019), but this time with the PD, Italia Viva and Liberi e Uguali, the ‘anti-politics’ party continued to blur, with some ministers performing poorly at the head of their party (Di Maio in Labour, Bonafede in Justice, Toninelli in Infrastructure). When Renzi brought down the coalition at the end of January 2021 and the Draghi government was formed (13 February 2021), the Five Star Movement supported it, only to bring it down themselves in July 2022, leading to general elections on the last weekend of September 2022.
It is now trying to ‘sell’ itself as a ‘left-wing party’, but its credibility is rather low: in quite a few regional government elections, it does not even reach 5% of the vote. Paradoxically, if the centre-left achieves victory in Campania in the coming months, one of its main “exponents” (Roberto Fico, former president of the lower house between 2018 and 2022) would be the first to govern a region. In reality, Five Star is a problem for the PD because it takes votes from the left that would normally go to the main centre-left party.
No credibility or strategy
Let's move on to Italia Viva, the party founded by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in September 2019. A party that started well in the polls, with more than 6% of the vote, but which has been hovering between 2.4% and 2.6% for three to four years. A very poor figure for someone who is still the youngest president of the Council of Ministers in republican Italy (he was 39 years and one month old when he became prime minister on 22 February 2014).
Although he remained steadfast until the end in his support for the Draghi government, when he formed the ‘Terzo Polo’ with Calenda's Azione (which earned them 7.8% of the vote in the September 2022 elections), the open war between Renzi and his supporters on the one hand, and Calenda and his party on the other, meant that, after the European elections in 2024, neither of them won a single seat in the European Parliament: 3.8% of the votes for Renzi and 3.2% for Calenda, when the threshold was 4%. Renzi ended up alienating his potential voters, and Calenda, who does not even know what it means to be prime minister (he was only a minister in the Renzi and Gentiloni governments), continues to think that he is someone of relevance in Italian politics, even though he did not even manage to become mayor of Rome in 2021, despite the fact that neither the centre-left nor the centre-right wanted him (it was finally won by the centre-left in the person of Roberto Gualteri).
And finally, there is Piu Europa, the party founded by Emma Bonino, who is now in very poor health. In their case, they do not even reach 2% of the vote, and have not done so for years, but they persist in continuing. They will surely end up merging with Italia Viva, because with that percentage of the vote they will not enter Parliament in future elections.
Schlein: an unconvincing choice
In any case, the main problem for the centre-left is not a group of parties riddled with inconsistencies and with many leaders already in the final stages of their political careers, but rather the leading figure in this formation: Ely Schlein, secretary-general of the Democratic Party (PD) since February 2023.
At a historic moment when leadership is key, the Democratic Party (PD) has chosen a ‘headliner’ who is simply ‘unsellable’. After the debacle in the 2022 elections, in which the centre-left ran without a candidate chosen in primaries and with three different groups (AVS-PD. Five Star Movement and Terzo Polo) when the electoral law (Rosattellum bis, approved in November 2017) rewards coalitions (for which it requires a minimum of 10% of the votes to enter Parliament, while individual parties require 3%), compared to parties running on their own, the time came, once the Meloni government was formed (22 October 2022), to look for a new leader. The result: 120 senators for the centre-right and 80 for the centre-left, with Meloni catapulted to the presidency of the Council of Ministers.
With Renzi and Calenda already out of the party, and in need of a new leader, there were two possibilities: either a candidate from the so-called ‘reformist wing’ (Bonaccini, at that time president of the Emilia-Romagna region, the ‘red’ region par excellence), or someone from a new generation. It was then that Ely Schlein, a young politician born in 1985 who had been a Member of the European Parliament, Vice-President of Emilia-Romagna and now a member of the lower house, decided to put forward her alternative candidacy. And, unexpectedly, she ended up beating Bonaccini, and has been leading the PD ever since.
But, almost three years later, it has become clear that Schlein was not the person the centre-left needed to try to wrest the presidency of the Council of Ministers from the centre-right. An intelligent person (she studied law at the prestigious University of Bologna with top marks), she has a “communist” air about her that makes her unpopular even in the more moderate wing of the centre-left. And that's despite the fact that in the 2024 European elections she was less than 5 points behind Meloni (28.8% for Meloni and 24.4% for Schlein), but a year later, the polls, without exception, do not allow her to rise above 20-21%, while Meloni has shot up to 30%. The truth is that Schlein could be a very good Minister of Justice with her extensive legal training, but her appeal among centre-left voters is rather limited.
Opposite her is Prime Minister Meloni, who has a very polished image and knows how to handle herself with great skill on the international stage, with a mixture of discretion, strength and even charm. This skill has led her, on the one hand, to have growing influence in the European Union and, on the other, to have a particularly good relationship with the US president (Donald Trump) at a key moment in terms of trade relations.
The markets reward Meloni's stability
In addition, some of her ministers are highly regarded. Matteo Piantedosi, in the Interior Ministry, has a thorough understanding of the country's security issues, having worked on them since the late 1980s. Guido Crosetto, incidentally, co-founder with Meloni of her party (Fratelli d'Italia), is an excellent Minister of Defence, having previously been president of the Defence Industry Association and having a thorough understanding of the issues facing his ministry. And Antonio Tajani, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, although he does not know much about the diplomatic world, is a major figure within the European Union, where he has been a Member of the European Parliament, Commissioner, Vice-President of the Commission and, finally, President of the European Parliament.
This is a key issue, given that the European Union is crucial to protecting the battered economies of the main European countries and that Italy, in particular, will receive €30 billion annually from 2021 to 2027, having taken €210 billion of the €750 billion that made up the Recovery Fund. This is an issue in which, incidentally, the figure of Raffaele Fitto from Puglia has been key. He is one of the main bastions of the Italian centre-right and was first minister for the administration of these funds and, since the end of 2024, has been one of the six executive vice-presidents of the current European Commission.
It is true that, from a macroeconomic point of view, the Meloni government's management (whose economic area, with Giorgetti and Urso, is by far the weakest) does not present good data. In 2022, growth was 4.8%, but we must remember that Mario Draghi was prime minister until 22 October: by 2023, growth had fallen to just 1.0%, and 2024 was even worse, at 0.7%. The first half of 2025 has not been good either, but this has much more to do with Trump's zigzagging on tariffs than with mistakes by the Meloni government. Meanwhile, per capita debt continues to grow: while in 2022 each Italian owed €46,854, in the first quarter of 2025 the figure had already risen to €51,470.
Meloni, favourite to win another term
Of course, it should also be noted that, of the top five economies in the eurozone, Italy has shown the highest level of stability in recent years. During her three years in government, Meloni has seen Germany enter recession and the chancellorship return to the hands of the Christian Democrats (Friedrich Merz's CDU); France enter its most unstable period since the Fourth Republic, with Macron, since his re-election in 2022, has already had to appoint five different prime ministers who do not know what to do with his monstrous public debt (€3,305,287 million); Sánchez in Spain, who, despite very good GDP growth (3.5% in 2024), finds himself completely blocked, with his wife and brother about to stand trial for legal issues, and who has been unable to pass a General State Budget in either 2023 or 2024 (something that Meloni, on the other hand, has done every year and on time); and, finally, the Netherlands, where the right and the far right have fractured the government because they cannot reach an agreement on immigration policy.
All this explains, in part, why the markets have rewarded the strength of Meloni's government and why the risk premium has remained at around 100 basis points for years, a very good figure for such an indebted country.
For years, Meloni was the ‘ugly duckling’ of the centre-right and of her generation. Within the centre-right, she was first in the shadow of Berlusconi and then of Salvini, but now she is in charge and there is no debate. Also, as far as the generation born in the 1970s is concerned, she was first in the shadow of Matteo Renzi and then of Matteo Salvini. But now neither of them is a rival. This is because Meloni, unlike the two ‘Matteos’, is neither arrogant nor does she make grandiose announcements, as both Renzi and Salvini did in their time.
It is foreseeable that, when the elections come around, the centre-right will lose some ground and the centre-left will also gain some, but unless there is a major change, Meloni will remain at the helm of the Council of Ministers. Meanwhile, some continue with the constant nonsense of calling the Roman politician a ‘far-right leader’ (they should read the 1948 Constitution to understand that this is not possible). And, in the meantime, Meloni continues steadily towards re-election.
What future is there for the centre-left? Certainly not Schlein, who is expected to be ‘home’ by 2027. In reality, the centre-left does have hope in the person of Silvia Salis, the newly elected mayor of Genoa: born in the same year as Schlein (1985), she presents a modern image, her discourse is conciliatory and she gives the impression of being the leader of the future. For the moment, she is focusing on her current task, which is to modernise the capital of Liguria. But don't be surprised if she follows in the footsteps of Renzi, who was mayor of Florence from 2009 to 2014 and then president of the Council of Ministers. Will the same situation repeat itself fifteen years later? It's possible, but the only thing that is clear now is that we are witnessing the heyday of Rome's Meloni. If she manages to win re-election, she will have achieved two feats: becoming the first female president of the Council of Ministers and the first to win a second term. Meanwhile, the centre-left is embroiled in yet another fratricidal struggle because they know they are heading for another defeat.