What if we defended the national state from the South?

But there is another aspect of the problem which the South never mentions, and it concerns not so much the damage that such a law could cause to the South, but the damage to the country as a whole. Unfortunately, the southern ruling classes have for some time assumed a purely claiming, almost trade unionist attitude, as if the only thing they had to deal with was the defense of the share of public spending destined for their territories. The so-called national point of view, the general interest, is rarely considered as relevant for the South, and this contributes to weakening our good reasons in the rest of the country, thus giving rise to the caricature of a crybaby and beggarly southern our enemies credit.

One of the few exceptions to this rule is the argument that Gaetano Quagliariello, former senator of the centre-right and former minister, exponent of southernism therefore not of the left, used a few days ago from the columns of the Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno. He also opposes the bill prepared by his former colleagues, but on the basis of two other observations. The first concerns the failure to provide for a supremacy clause that allows the State to prevail in the face of crises and emergency situations; on the other hand, and not by chance, a clause is even envisaged in states with a federal structure such as the United States and Germany. The second criticism concerns the failure to review the 23 subjects that the 2001 constitutional reform had defined as transferable to the regions upon their request. Because in that list there are some that the epochal changes that have taken place in the meantime strongly advise against subtracting from the central state, if you do not want their dissolution.

And these are the great transport and communication networks and the production, transport and distribution of energy. The events of recent years and the technological development underway should have amply demonstrated to us that it is ridiculous or suicidal to entrust energy and communications networks to regions, when the problem is rather to build and protect them on a continental, if not even global, scale. We would not like to find ourselves one day with a De Luca making contracts for the purchase of Russian gas against the opinion of the central state, as he attempted to do for the purchase of Sputnik, the Moscow vaccine that had bewitched him. Nor would we like the decision on the passage of a gas pipeline to end up in the hands of Emiliano, who has already tried to stop the Tap.

It therefore seems to me that the approach to Quagliariello’s question is more serious for constructing a southern point of view, certainly more serious than the barricades: a further weakening of the national state would in fact not be of any benefit to the South, and indeed would damage it precisely because weakest area. On the contrary, Southerners should rediscover the advantages that a revival of the common state construction can offer. And defend it from pseudo or proto-secessionist plans. And when Quagliariello points out that the government project contradicts Giorgia Meloni’s intention to restore a principle of state authority, he is right. In fact, I believe that, if she could, the prime minister would never have presented this bill, the banner of Northern League autonomism in Veneto and Lombardy. But precisely for this reason, fighting it in the name of national unity is the best way to put pressure on the top government so that it doesn’t pass as it is.