Salvini’s leadership of far-right League faces calls to resign

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Salvini’s leadership of far-right League faces calls to resign

The leader of Italy's far-right League, Matteo Salvini, is facing calls to resign from senior figures within his party after a dramatic fall in its support in Sunday's general election that saw it routed in its northern heartlands.

The party was a member of the triumphant coalition of far-right leader Giorgia Meloni, but its share of the vote fell to 9%, an abysmal result for a party that polled at almost 40% in the year 2019.

It's time for a new leader, Roberto Maroni, a former head of the League and former Lombardy governor, wrote a column for the daily newspaper Il Foglio. I know who is going to be elected as the new party secretary. I am not naming names for now. His call came after reports in Italy that Salvini will not be reappointed interior minister by Meloni, a position he had previously held with the Five Star Movement from 2018 to 2019 and used to try to block migrants from landing in Italian ports.

The reports suggested that Meloni had decided to give the interior minister's portfolio to a member of her Brothers of Italy, in light of the League's disappointing electoral result and to give Salvini's League a more marginal role.

Roberto Castelli, a former justice minister and League leader, said the era of Salvini's leadership of the League is over.

The former leaders of the League and thousands of supporters accuse Salvini of having distorted the party and its regional roots in a bid to make it a national force.

The Northern League, founded in 1989, aims to assert the interests of northern Italy but in the course of his leadership Salvini changed it by abandoning the old autonomist and secessionist claims and embracing the sovereign and populist currents of contemporary far right.

The call for Salvini's resignation was the result of another disappointing result for the party: Umberto Bossi, the once-secessionist Northern League leader, failed to be elected to Parliament for the first time in 35 years.

Bossi, 81, was the top of the League's proportional ticket for the house in his home town of Varese, but the party failed to gain a seat there, reflecting a poor performance even in its northern heartlands, in the elections where the Brothers of Italy gobbled up much of the League's former base.

Salvini admitted that he is not satisfied with the League's election results, but he stressed that he had no intention of resigning, saying that the outcome had made him even more determined.