Renzi, Calenda and the “Terzo Polo”: Story of a divorce foretold
While the current President of the Council of Ministers, the Roman Meloni, is doing everything she can to contain the ever-increasing wave of irregular immigrants arriving on Italian shores in recent weeks, in recent days we have witnessed a shameful rift between two of the main leaders of the Italian centre-left: Renzi, the main figure of Italia Viva, and Calenda, president of Azione. At the centre of the conflict between the two, the creation of the so-called "single party" that materialised in a single formation the Terzo Polo with which they contested the "political" elections of September 2022 and which led to two million votes that translated into three dozen parliamentarians divided between the two legislative chambers.
To understand what has happened, one has to go back to April 2015, when the then Minister for Economic Development, Federica Guidi, had to resign for alleged influence peddling (from which she later emerged unscathed) and the then "premier" Matteo Renzi had to promote the Roman Calenda, who had already been deputy prime minister in the same portfolio since the beginning of the Renzi government in February 2014, to the rank of minister. As is well known, in December 2016 the Tuscan politician had to resign because of his defeat in the constitutional "referendum" and was succeeded by Paolo Gentiloni, who had until then been head of foreign affairs and who inherited from Renzi not only the "maggioranza" with which the latter had governed for almost three years (1,020 days, a "record number of days"), but also the "maggioranza" with which he had governed for almost three years (1,020 days, a "record number of days", a "record number of days"). 020 days, a record only surpassed by Silvio Berlusconi, twice, and by Bettino Craxi, premier between 1983 and 1987), but also the vast majority of ministers who had worked under Renzi: except for Maria Elena Boschi's move to the undersecretariat of the presidency of the Council of Ministers; Sicilian Alfano's switch from Interior to Foreign Affairs; and the entry of Calabrian Marco Minniti into the Viminale (headquarters of the aforementioned Interior Ministry), all ministers repeated in their respective portfolios and remained in them until their definitive departure in the last week of May 2018.
During the time that Renzi and Calenda shared the government, there were no conflicts between them, as the hierarchies were very clear: the former was, in addition to being the 'premier', Secretary General of the Democratic Party (PD), former mayor of Florence and at that time the figure that shone most brightly in the whole of the transalpine political arc. In contrast, Calenda, two years older than Renzi, had much less political pedigree because he came from the world of business and, in relation to this, his entry into centre-left governments was the beginning of his political career.
Eventually, and with Renzi on the verge of leaving the PD and founding his new party (Italia Viva), Calenda agreed to head the ticket of the main centre-left party in the European elections of May 2019, receiving Renzi's express support. In these elections, in addition to sweeping Salvini's League with 34% of the vote, the PD showed that it was still on the "tightrope", since, despite having a new Secretary General (Nicola Zingaretti, President of the Lazio Region since 2013), the centre-left formation was only able to increase its vote by 4 points compared to Renzi's debacle in the "political" elections of 2018 (22% to 18% a year and a few months earlier).
Thus, the first confrontation between Calenda and Renzi would take place in August 2019, when Renzi, faced with the fact that Salvini had brought down the coalition government formed with the Five Star Movement (baptised with the pompous name of "government contract"), and faced with the risk of the League leader sweeping early elections, decided to forge a pact with the "pentastellini", a pact that was also supported by the party's "old guard". Calenda, on the other hand, placed himself alongside Gentiloni and Zingaretti in the group of those opposed to this pact, and, before the television cameras, stated without the slightest qualm that Renzi made this pact in order not to lose control of the PD's parliamentary groups, In the face of a former Tuscan "premier" who was "selling" that the pact was to prevent Salvini's arrival at the presidency of the Council of Ministers from leading to an excessive rise in Value Added Tax (VAT), which would be very damaging to the citizens of his country.
The truth is that, within days of each other, and once the new government born of the PD-Cinque Stelle pact was formed, both Calenda and Renzi left what had been their "common home" until then: Calenda to found Azione, and Renzi, in turn, to set up Italia Viva. Renzi's party was considerably larger than Calenda's: for example, Renzi had as many as 17 senators, compared to just one for Calenda. The truth is that both would grow with the different "administrative" elections they contested: we are referring to the elections of 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Calenda was soon ahead of Renzi in terms of voting intentions: while the former spent most of the second half of the 18th Legislature at 2.4-2.6% (which made him an extra-parliamentary candidate, given that the "sbarramento" or threshold for entering Parliament was 3%), Calenda was at 3.5-3.8%, even exceeding 4% in some polls.
Thus, in January 2021 came a new verbal "aggression" by Calenda against Renzi, on the occasion of a conference given by the former "premier" in Saudi Arabia: This country known for its lack of respect for the most fundamental human rights, Calenda harshly criticised Renzi, who needed the huge amounts of money that the Saudis gave him for each conference in order to finance his political activity, considering that the foundation that had paid for all his political activity between 2012 and 2018 (known as Open and under judicial investigation since 2018) could no longer cover the high costs of a political party at a time when Renzi was beginning to open offices across the country, and that he also had to finance his autumn congress, known as "Leopolda", which was and still is held in an old train station in Florence, where he was mayor for five years.
Renzi turned a deaf ear to Calenda's words and, when he decided to run for mayor of Rome in October 2021, he gave him his political support: it was of little use, because Calenda, defeated by Gualteri (centre-left candidate) and Michetti (head of the centre-right ticket), was only able to outvote Virginia Raggi, mayor of the country's capital between 2016 and 2021. When it came time for the 'ballotaggio' (run-off), and with Calenda out of the race, Renzi backed Roberto Gualteri, former Minister of Economy and Finance and a good personal friend of Renzi's, eventually becoming the new Mayor of Rome.
The paths of Calenda and Renzi crossed again in the summer of 2022. Their two parties had been part of the 'maggioranza' that had sustained the Draghi government (February 2021-July 2022), but when the time came to forge a coalition for the 'political' elections scheduled for September of that year, Calenda had no intention of joining Renzi. However, the PD leadership, which initially made the pact with Calenda and intentionally marginalised Renzi, deceived him by not letting him know that the coalition they were going to form would include both communists and ecologists, two parties that had voted against the Draghi government 56 times while Calenda was part of the "maggioranza" that supported that government.
What the PD leadership did not realise was that Calenda was not one to "swallow the bull's-eye": he immediately broke his coalition pact with the PD and it was at that moment that a completely isolated Matteo Renzi offered him a joint candidacy. Calenda, knowing that his image was literally in tatters, agreed to make a pact with his former Prime Minister on the basis that Renzi would "step aside" and leave him as his running mate. Renzi accepted and thus was born the "Terzo Polo", which was intended to be an alternative between the "sovereignist" centre-right and the "populist" left (at least that was what the always very skilful Renzi was selling).
Two former Forza Italia ministers (Carfagna and Gelmini) would join this coalition, but no one else outside Azione and Italia Viva. The 7.8 per cent of the vote was a good starting point for a coalition only two months old, despite the lack of realism of Calenda, who believed that they could have surpassed the "doppia" figure (i.e., more than 10 per cent of the vote), something that Renzi probably never thought of.
From that point on, the two agreed on the composition of the parliamentary groups: the "capogruppo" of the "Terzo Polo" in the lower house would be someone from Azione, while that of the upper house would be a representative of Renzi's party. What is striking is that both leaders wanted to be in the Senate: Renzi had already been a member of the Senate in the previous legislature, but Calenda was new to the upper house, now made up of only 200 members compared to the historic 315 after the "taglio" approved in a "referendum" in September 2020.
Renzi, contrary to his tradition, decided to adopt a low profile and limited his television appearances as much as possible: it seemed clear that 2023 should be a year of calm for him after very troubled years, and that the time to regain momentum should be the first half of 2024, with an eye on the European elections to be held in May next year. Let us recall that the eurozone's third largest economy has had in the European institutions two presidents of the Europarliament (Antonio Tajani and Davide Sassoli, between January 2017 and December 2021); a President of the Commission (Romano Prodi, between August 1999 and May 2004); a President of the European Central Bank (ECB, Mario Draghi, between November 2011 and October 2019); and a foreign policy leader (Federica Moguerini, August 2014-May 2019). However, there has never been an Italian at the helm of the presidency of the European Council, which has been held by two Belgians (Van Rompuy and Michel) and one Pole (Tusk). And it would not be surprising if Renzi, who has very good support in the European institutions, were to consider becoming the new President of the European Council, given that in national politics he is at a populist low point in terms of popularity for more than five years.
The truth was that the peace between Calenda and Renzi would be too short-lived. Calenda was already starting to talk about moving from the 'Terzo Polo' to the single party, while Renzi felt that the time had not yet come. When Ely Schlein took over the PD's general secretariat in February, which meant a strong "turn to the left" of the party, Renzi began to give in to the constitution of the single party. The problem was that the two had different timetables: Calenda wanted it immediately, while Renzi wanted the party to be formed in October 2023.
What happened to lead to the rift between the two? There are different explanations for what happened. One is that Renzi may have an interest in new "administrative" elections being held before the constituent congress of the new party (in addition to the government of regions such as Molise, Abruzzo and Basilicata), which would give him the possibility of negotiating with more strength the presence of his party in the new party, given that it had been decided that Calenda would be the leader of the new "political subject".
The second is quite different, and is related to the current situation of the main centre-right party, Forza Italia, a party that is in agony because it is highly personalistic and its leader (the politician and businessman Silvio Berlusconi) is in very poor health. His 86 years of age, his two open-heart surgeries, and a life plagued by conflicts with the judiciary as well as permanent clashes with the centre-left, make one think that his vital end is ever closer, and those who rule the party outside it (above all Antonio Tajani, the current Deputy Prime Minister and head of the party), and the party's leaders (especially Antonio Tajani, the current deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister) could be trying to merge with Renzi's party, given that the Tuscan politician, detested to an unsuspected extent by the Five Star Movement and by most of the Democratic Party, has traditionally been a very well-liked person in the ranks of the centre-right and, more particularly, by Forza Italia. As Renzi recalled in an interview months ago, "I have never voted for Berlusconi, but I have never attacked him either".
Perhaps this last possibility is what has led Calenda to enter the conflict like an "elephant in a china shop": a deeply distrustful person who is very prone to verbal outbursts, she thinks that Renzi is hiding something from her, and that precisely that something would be to forge a pact with the leadership of the historic centre-right party.
Mara Carfagna, an Azione member of parliament but a close friend of Matteo Renzi's for years, has now decided to try to bring "peace" to this divorce that has already been all but consummated. Carfagna has stated that what needs to be done is to create a broad "coalition of the centre", following the model of Macron in France, who took advantage of the disappearance of socialism and the collapse of the right to create a party that would unite in a single formation the broad temperate zone of his country, which has earned him being elected twice President of the French Republic (the first in 2017 and the second in 2022). Carfagna, like Renzi, is based on the idea that with Schlein at the head of the PD, and with Meloni leading the centre-right coalition, a polarisation of political life is taking place that would lead to a broad centre coalition being able to monopolise a significant percentage of the vote that does not identify with Schlein, Meloni or Salvini.
Carfagna can hardly prevent Calenda and Renzi from reconciling: too many insults in recent days, most of them directed from Azione in the face of a Renzi party leadership (represented by Maria Elena Boschi, Elena Bonetti and Luigi Marattin) that is greatly surprised by the degree of virulence with which their former coalition partners are acting. In any case, all of them (from both parties) know that a complete break-up is something to be considered very carefully because having their own parliamentary group in both chambers brings the two parties large sums of money. The problem is that those who have to reconcile are those who are largely incompatible: a Renzi who does not take orders from anyone and a Calenda who is increasingly impulsive and less and less inclined to dialogue and to bringing positions closer together. We shall see how all this plays out, but it does seem clear that we are facing a "story of a divorce foretold". The future of the "Terzo Polo", more question marks than ever.
Pablo Martín de Santa Olalla Saludes is Professor at Camilo José Cela University (UCJC) and author of Historia de la Italia republicana (Madrid, Sílex Ediciones, 2021).