«Looting against the 5 Stars. We interpret the discomfort and look for answers»- Corriere.it

Joseph Conte rejects requests for apologies to the sender, replies with a hard face to those who claim that he indirectly fomented the death threats to Giorgia Meloni. «Those who accuse us are in bad faith. It is an instrumental controversy », he says to Courier
the leader of the Movement,
engaged in Milan yesterday in probing the moods of that part of the electorate closest to the world of the left. Conte, intercepted during a coffee break between selfies and handshakes while waiting to follow the premiere of La Scala with families in difficulty in the Cardinal Ferrari Opera hall, clarifies: «With the Movement we try to interpret people’s discomfort and offer of the answers. The basic income comes from this awareness of the need for a social protection system”. Then he counterattacks: «Dismantling it means aggravating the difficulty, the frustration of the people. Accusing us of fomenting a climate of hatred is a looting action that doesn’t even have any logical foundation”.

The tone with the government is head-on: «Meloni used insulting and strong words against me during my presidency, Crosetto himself uses them now. Meloni spoke towards me with a lip that has never been clarified. We are insulted and they even want to accuse us of threats. It seems to me a completely upside down mechanism».

In short, the starry president does not fit not even to take into consideration that the Movement can be perceived as too radical: «We are radical but based on principles and values, as for the ways of interpreting social unease, we are constructive”. Conte also specifies that it is a mistake to identify the M5S only with Income: «We don’t just focus on basic income: we make it a systemic problem. Let’s talk about starvation wages and therefore the minimum wage, we are talking about an impoverished middle class in support of which a more substantial cut in the tax wedge was needed against the wild precariousness which prevents the cultivation of life projects and which plunges women and young people especially into uncertainty». To those who contest the poor hold of the Movement in Lombardy and in other northern regions, he replies: «We are the party that supported the superbonus and the 4.0 transition in favor of businesses in the government, we are the political force that introduced the guarantee fund for businesses, measures to boost the competitiveness of our companies: many of these measures have benefited the North, which has the strongest productive fabric in the country. Describing ourselves as the welfare party of the South means telling a story for fools who fall for it».

Conte tries to build a front, weaving new alliances to relaunch the opposition to the government: “With Bonomi there are points of contact on the maneuver”, he explains speaking of the face to face with the leader of Confindustria. And he continues: «We both recognize that this maneuver is without vision, it does not envisage any investment and therefore no possibility of growth for companies. What worries most and worries both is that without investment measures for businesses we end up losing competitiveness and it is a big problem in perspective for the country. We risk returning to bring up the rear for the power of real wages».

The Five Star leader also dampens the idea face to face with the premier: «I meet everyone, but it seems to me that this government has defined this maneuver and that it is proudly convinced of these interventions, which will lead us into a recession. I don’t think there are any dialog boxes.’ And also on the alliances for the Regionals, the leader tries to weave the lines following the convenience. While in Lazio he closes to the dem (“We talked about programs and contents and they answered us with a candidate that they have armored. Well, if they keep him close. Good luck”, he will tell reporters) and prepares for a solitary race, in Lombardy the agreement is approaching: «There was a meeting with the regional Democratic Party, which agrees on some of our issues: stop to political appointments in public health and stop to incinerators and openings towards eco-sustainable technologies. We have already identified 2-3 plants to be shut down in perspective».