Elly’s pointing finger and Giorgia’s gaze. This is how the duel between the 2 most powerful women takes place – Corriere.it

L’task: tell every detail of this first meeting between Giorgia and Elly. Voice tones and looks, posture, sighs, hands. Here it is: the hands. They are two leaders who gesticulate a lot. Even minor details are welcome: such as how they are dressed (up here, in the Montecitorio press box, the ghost of Giampaolo Pansa, prince of reporters, was immediately evoked, who in fact came with binoculars).

The premier: in a black suit (or a blue so dark as to appear blackish). The secretary of the Democratic Party: with a pale pink jacket and a patterned shirt. And, already here, good people would already draw eighty lines. But now Elly stands up and immediately attacks Giorgia on the need to introduce the minimum wage. He calls her: Madam President … (I note that Meloni instead asks to be defined as the premier, or the president). Elly: voice less broken than usual (sensation: with a little break-in it can get even better), lunar arguments for the dem of recent years (Below a certain threshold, it cannot be called work: but exploitation!), index finger pointing towards Georgia.

Obvious strategy: I came here for you, I talk to you, watch me talk to you. Now: if you know Meloni a little, try to imagine her face too that she puts on her. Something that, more or less, says: don’t worry dear, I’m here, I’ll answer you now.

It’s hard to say if she experiences it as a duel: certainly this 37-year-old secretary – determined, free, of pure charm – Giorgia saw it coming all too well; and she certainly knows how to evaluate its overwhelming freshness (then, in a few months, we’ll see if she has been able to add political solidity to the north wind of novelty).

However: the question time game provides, for the premier, only one answer (while Elly will have the right to a rejoinder). But Giorgia knows everything anyway, she has seen everything. She carries a crazy job: she entered here at the age of only 29, she immediately became vice-president of the Chamber, then one afternoon she presented herself to the Cavaliere (at the time when the lights of Palazzo Grazioli remained on – let’s say – all night) and explained to him: I’m uncomfortable, I’m leaving. What do you need? the Knight replied, thinking that everyone has a price. He didn’t understand: I’m founding a party of my own.

In short: to think that Meloni may even be worried about responding to Schlein, a little too much. For she knows that politics is a long daily game. And that, today, now, you have just a handful of minutes available for a reply. And so: she snubs her opponent, calling her the interrogators. Then, you first hit hard on the opposition (whoever governed up to now has made Italians poorer), then you propose the extension of collective bargaining.

With the deputies who pressed her a little while ago, she was calm, with a beating of sarcasm. Now the voice goes up. He spells out the words. How many rallies have I had in her life? a precise request: from the benches of the majority, punctually, you roll a standing ovation.

Calm. Let’s talk to Elly (who listened to her by tapping the fingers of her right hand). Feeling confirmed: she learns quickly. Madam President, your answers do not satisfy us !.

The prime minister listens with a vague air of smugness, her chin resting on her hand, a word to Matteo Salvini, who sits next to her, and who nods (it’s always exciting to see Salvini nod to Meloni: a little less to see the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, handsome peaceful, while Naples in flames).

Elly gains strength: I remind you that now I am in opposition, and you in government…. Wait. Elly says — exactly — like this: Now-I-am-no-me-to-the-opposition-.

I: it’s you and me. Total customization of the fight. A scheme that, in these minutes, we all realize is already almost a classic. Here: while the secretary of the Democratic Party concludes her speech, a scribble remains on the notes, a concept: new world. Because really having seen the two most powerful women in the country – one at the helm of the government, the other of the opposition – confront each other without delay, the plastic demonstration that everything we have said to each other in recent weeks was perfectly true.

There is a completely revolutionized scene (and the first to understand it is Giuseppe Conte, the head of the 5 Stars: mute, dazed, greyed, the man with the pocket square walks in his precocious sunset).