A rising star of Italy’s leftwing alliance has said it is working to regain trust as it seeks to tap the 40% of voters who are unsure of who to back in Sunday’s general election, and pledged to “fight until the very last day” to fend off what could be Italy’s first far-right government since the second world war.
Elly Schlein, a former MEP, first came to prominence in early 2020 after her small party, Coraggiosa (Courageous), played a pivotal role in stopping the far right from seizing power in the traditionally leftwing Emilia-Romagna region.
Schlein, 37, was then appointed the region’s vice-president, and in this election she is running as an independent candidate on the Democratic party’s Progressive Italy list.
Schlein, an Italian-American national, is often compared in Italy to the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is also vocal on social justice issues.
A coalition led by Brothers of Italy, a descendant of neofascism, and including the far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is forecast to win the election comfortably. A splintered left that lost touch with its supporters has partly been blamed for the success of the rightwing group.
Schlein was a member of the Democratic party (PD) until 2015, but left out of frustration over the direction the party was taking under its then leader, Matteo Renzi. The PD is now led by Enrico Letta.
“We’re trying to go out and talk to the 40% of undecided voters, as most of them still have not decided if and who they will vote for on 25 September,” she said. “We have to try to regain trust. It’s hard because I myself am part of a generation that has had a complicated relationship with politics because we didn’t feel represented.”
Schlein said she “couldn’t bear” the PD any more after Renzi enforced his flagship jobs act, containing labour market measures that made it easier for employers to fire people and to hire on precarious contracts. “This had a strong impact, especially on young people and women,” she said.
Schlein, who in Emilia Romagna is responsible for equality and environmental initiatives, also criticised Renzi’s policies on the environment and the constitution, which she said had “nothing to do with leftwing policies”.
Letta drafted in Schlein to bring vibrancy to the left’s campaign, help heal its divisions and connect with younger voters.
Although the PD was only a few points behind Brothers of Italy in final pre-election polls, it has struggled with forming an alliance strong enough to take on the right. Letta ruled out pairing up with the Five Star Movement (M5S), with which the PD shares ideas on policies such as the environment and the minimum wage, after M5S triggered the collapse of Mario Draghi’s government in July.
Meanwhile, two centrist parties, including Renzi’s Italia Viva, refused to join the PD after Letta formed an agreement with smaller, more radical leftwing groups.
Schlein said the left had spent the past year “reconnecting with those worlds with which we had fractures over the last decade. I’m talking about trade unions, workers, schools, teachers, migrant activists … and finally we have the most progressive programme the PD has ever presented.”
She said the international community had reason to worry about the prospect of a government that includes two parties whose ideas are more in tune with those of Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, taking power.
“The model of this coalition is the illiberal democracy of Orbán,” she said. “We have reason to worry, as their ideas give no solutions to the concrete problems of Italy’s poorest people. They are only good at pointing the finger at a scapegoat every day, a very old strategy which has only brought bad things to the European continent. So we’re going to fight until the very last day to try to win this battle.”
