Renzi Draws Cheers and Applause at Unity Festival: ‘Enough Navel-Gazing’

Matteo Renzi returned to Bologna’s Festa dell’Unità to cheers from a packed room, but the setting was smaller than the one he knew as prime minister in 2014. About 300 people attended, while Renzi now leads an allied Italia Viva party polling around 3%, with Giorgia Meloni governing Italy.

The former Democratic Party leader used the event to shift attention away from the centre-left’s debate over primary elections. “The game is the secondaries, not the primaries,” Renzi said, warning that a victory for his opponents could give Meloni another five years in the prime minister’s office and seven years at the Quirinal Palace. He said he did not want seven years of Meloni after Sergio Mattarella’s 14 years.

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The game is the secondaries, not the primaries.

Renzi said it was legitimate for Elly Schlein and Giuseppe Conte to compete in primaries, but argued that the centre-left could find a workable process. “Let’s stop talking to our navels,” he said, presenting the larger challenge as one the opposition could not afford to lose.

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Let’s stop talking to our navels.

He also predicted that Carlo Calenda, the leader of Azione, would ultimately join the broader alliance once he understood it could win. Renzi said reformists were necessary for victory and called for a reformist home within the centre-left.

Renzi said he had experienced the Democratic Party’s break with him painfully, while acknowledging that others, including Schlein, had returned. He said it would be difficult to recreate the party’s former political moment. He warned that anyone who broke up the broad alliance would be held responsible for helping Meloni win.

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I am widening as much as possible.