Autonomy, the three knots to untie

To give the green light to the bill on differentiated autonomy a government led by a prime minister who never misses an opportunity, in her utterances, to resort obsessively to the terms of nation and homeland (instead of country), leader of a party that from a centralist and statist political culture, as well as with a past of strong roots in the South, albeit tempered in recent times by a Northern twist to capture votes in the northern regions. Continuing to talk about a nation while, at the same time, the green light is given to many small homelands cannot last long. Nationalist patriotism and regionalist patriotism are, in fact, two antithetical options, starting with the implementation of the Mattei Plan – in which the imprint of a nationalist statism clearly emerges – on which the premier is betting a lot of her credibility. And she certainly cannot be the smoky and unrealistic flag of presidentialism to represent the point of balance between the two extremes. Already in recent weeks, the Northern League’s acceleration has been supported by the premier and his party, as well as by FI, as a concession to the ally in difficulty rather than as a fully shared project, and has produced ill-concealed annoyances as well as (off-record) statements aimed at reassuring about the (non) effective realization of the project. It is easy to predict, also in this case, that the closer the Europeans get, the more contradictions will explode in the centre-right. The third node concerns the Democratic Party, heir to that centre-left which was the true generator of differentiated autonomy, at the legislative and constitutional level, with the reform of Title V in 2001, certainly not out of conviction but to chase and mimic, in an awkward and unfortunate, the League in an attempt to remove the flag of federalism from him. A centre-left which, up until a few weeks ago, was still completely subordinate on this issue. The result is there for all to see: the heirs of that great mess not only have never touched the ball in the North in the last twenty years, but have lost a lot of credibility in the South. A masterpiece.

And yet, if the Democratic Party has one chance of surviving and regenerating today, it is that of investing, as has been observed from many quarters, in the prairie that is opening up in the South, trying to contain and disarticulate the political-social bloc with a northern traction that dictates the agenda in the country for thirty years. Without fearing the admission of the macroscopic blunder of 2001 and definitively distancing itself from the wavering line on differentiated autonomy followed, in recent years, by the national party and the regional sultanates. More than a possibility, in truth, a compulsory path for the entire Democratic Party, even in the north. And the candidates for the secretariat seem to be realizing it. If these three knots are resolved in the foreseen framework, the Calderoli bill will not have an easy life and, on the contrary, the recent forcing by the Northern League could turn out to be a boomerang, producing the most classic heterogeneity of goals. Much will depend on the South, on its ability to keep its guard up, not to abandon the mobilization, to start talking and forging alliances with those sectors of northern society that are developing a conscious rejection of strengthened regionalism. And, above all, to pursue a basic objective: to seize this passage to finally overturn the table on which the (rigged) game of the reorganization of the State has been playing for two decades in the direction of a botched, harmful and increasingly anachronistic para-federalism regionalist. Also questioning the very existence of the Regions.