Italy: Ely Schlein wins PD primaries and becomes first woman leader of the centre-left

Against all odds, the young Ely Schlein, until now vice-president of the Emilia-Romagna government, has won the Democratic Party (PD) primaries against the favourite in all the pools, who was none other than her political mentor, Bonaccini, president of the same region, considered the "terra rossa" ("red soil") par excellence of the third largest economy in the Eurozone. She did so with a very narrow victory: with 80% of the votes counted, she beat Bonaccini by 54%, while the veteran leader only received 46% of the voters' support. This is precisely the first difficulty for Schlein: he won by a very small margin. What's more, she is the first PD secretary general who has not even exceeded 60% of the vote, as Pierluigi Bersani did in 2009, Matteo Renzi in 2013 and 2017, and Nicola Zingaretti in 2019.

Of course, given the history of the Democratic Party (PD), a party born on 14 October 2007 and which has been a real leader-crusher since its inception, starting with such a fair victory should not be of such concern to Schlein. Matteo Renzi, with whom the new secretary general has so few affinities but who shares with her the fact of having been the only party leader to take control of the party despite not even being 39 years old (he was 38 years and eleven months old when, in December 2013, he won the PD primaries for the first time), has said on numerous occasions that "twice I have won and twice they have made internal war on me" (remember that in June 2017 he won his second victory over his rivals Emiliano and Orlando). So winning by more or less in the DP is not the same as securing or not securing the support of the party leadership.

What is certain is that Schlein, with her unexpected victory last Sunday, has already made history: until then, only one woman (the former minister Rosario "Rosy" Bindy) had reached the final phase of the primaries (we are talking about the autumn of 2007). Subsequently, in all the primaries (2009, 2013, 2017 and 2019) both the winner and his rivals were all men. This time there was also another woman in the running, the former Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Paola De Micheli, but, in an election where it was decided that only two would make it to the final phase, De Micheli, a "grey" woman (like most PD politicians) was quickly left behind and it was of little use to her to have been deputy minister and minister in several governments.

The first thing that Schlein's victory signifies is, above all, a "generational change": De Micheli, like Renzi, was born in the 1970s, while Bonaccini, like the previous secretary general (Nicola Zingaretti), is from the 1960s. Schlein, on the other hand, was born in 1987. And so it was again December 2013: Renzi, born in 1975, ended up beating a Bersani who was 24 years older and who had already had to resign a few months earlier because he had been unable, despite winning the general election in February of that year, to reach an agreement with the centre-right on a candidate for president of the Republic: As soon as he realised, he had no less than 104 "snipers" (people in a party who vote against the leader's order under cover of the secret ballot) voting against what he proposed. Incidentally, ironically, Bersani was born the same year as Matteo Renzi's father, Tiziano, who has also been in politics but as a councillor in the small town of Rignano sull'Arno, very close to Florence.

What makes you think that Schlein can get the support that Renzi did not? In essence, Schlein is a leftist, unlike Renzi, who has never concealed his Christian Democrat status: left-wing, but, in the end, a Christian Democrat. It should not be forgotten that his father, Tiziano, was a lifelong member of the now defunct Christian Democrats (DC), the party that governed the country without interruption from December 1945 to April 1992, and which appointed all the presidents of the Council of Ministers until the DC leadership decided to cede the presidency first to a Republican (Giovanni Spadolini, premier between 1981 and 1983) and then to a Socialist (Bettino Craxi, Prime Minister between 1983 and 1987), only to regain it in the 1987-1992 legislature.

Certainly, one of the reasons that made the PD ungovernable was the coexistence in the same party of former communists and socialists on the one hand, and left-wing Christian Democrats on the other. Now comes a new generation, represented by Schlein, who was only 20 years old when the party was founded, and from there it remains to be seen which "squadra" she will form. Because, on the one hand, he has been supported by party veterans such as Zingaretti, former governor of the Lazio region and now a member of parliament, and Orlando, several times a minister and also a member of parliament, but both belong to that past of constant internal warfare within the centre-left. The PD is known for being a party divided into several currents, and the main problem for Schlein is that, in the current parliament, most of the protagonists of these constant internal struggles are those who have the largest number of seats in parliament, whether in the lower or upper house.

Schlein, who is the granddaughter of a veteran socialist and anti-fascist leader (the Lombard Agostino Viviani, senator from 1972 to 1979 for the Italian Socialist Party (PSI)) and the daughter of Melvin Schlein, an American political scientist who married a professor of comparative public law named Maria Paola Viviani, can be said to be a pure "PD product": the classic left-wing leader who, although born in the Swiss town of Lugano, quickly integrated into the capital of the country's most important left-wing region (Bologna).

It is already known that she will include in her team Mattia Santori, leader of the famous "Sardines" movement (born to prevent Matteo Salvini's victory in the elections for the government of Emilia-Romagna at the end of January 2020), and that her two most trusted people are two young politicians: Chiara Braga and Chiara Gribaudo. From here on, her programme revolves around three fundamental lines: work, minimum wage and the environment. Perhaps this is where the German influence is noticeable: in the last general elections held in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Greens were the third most voted force with very little difference over the two traditionally winning forces (Christian Democrats and Social Democrats). Moreover, the Greens in the current German coalition government currently share ministries with the Social Democrats and the Liberals, which makes it clear that young Western Europeans are more interested in environmental issues than in the policies traditionally advocated by the left. 

This is precisely one of the keys that will gradually become clear: with a Five Star Movement that already "sells itself" as a left-wing and environmentalist party (despite the fact that it is not remembered that they passed any law in favour of the environment when they governed between June 2018 and February 2021), will it compete with them or make pacts with this formation for the "administrative" elections and also for the government of another region (such as Abruzzo or Sardinia)? And what does he intend to do with Renzi's Italia Viva and the Azione de Calenda, as well as Bersani's and Speranza's Liberi e Uguali (LeU)? Because, let us not forget, what the last general election made clear is that either the PD widens its electoral base, or it will suffer more debacles in the future like the one experienced in the last general election, held in the last weekend of September, in which the PD only obtained 19% of the vote, being widely outnumbered by the Brothers of Italy (which, with the other two parties in its coalition, won more than 41% of the vote) and with the Five Star Movement only three and a half points behind.

What is to be welcomed is that, in one of the most sexist countries in the European Union, for the first time both the leader of the centre-right (Meloni) and the leader of the centre-left (Schlein) are both women: the only thing missing is a female president of the Republic, although with Sergio Mattarella in full office (despite his seniority), this issue will have to wait. In any case, Schlein has her work cut out for her, because her party is at its worst moment since its founding (it only has the support of 15-16% of voters), the internal currents are still there and Schlein still has very little political "curriculum". Renzi managed to end up as prime minister for 1,020 days but could not avoid being internally shredded by his own after the March 2018 general election. Schlein will be well received because she has a more conciliatory character than Renzi, but the truth is that her rival on the other side of the political spectrum is a Meloni who is more entrenched than ever, although her future is not so clear with such a large public debt and new interest rate hikes (the ECB has already said that it plans to raise interest rates next month from 3 to 3.5%). We shall see how far she is capable of going, having just become the fifth secretary general of the PD in just over fifteen years of the party's existence.

Pablo Martín de Santa Olalla Saludes is a lecturer at the Camilo José Cela University and author of the book "Historia de la Italia republicana (1946-2021)" (Madrid, Sílex Ediciones, 2021).