Matteo Renzi is in the Dolomites with his wife Agnese. Carlo Calenda is divided between Capalbio and family and Rome. Yet the two, albeit at a distance and busy in completely different matters (the first is busy demonstrating that Giorgia Meloni deep down has a feeling with Giuseppe Conte, the second tries to make sense of today’s summit on the minimum wage) they keep arguing.
Just a year has passed since their electoral partnership and in the meantime Calenda and Renzi have separated and reconciled at least five, six times. Their intention is to divorce: they should have done so about ten days ago, but then the leader of Action anticipated the news to the newspapers and Renzi, in order not to give him satisfaction, pulled the handbrake and canceled the press conference which should have sanctioned the break.
Drama, as always in divorces, is the price to pay. In this case it is a hard price for both: in the European Championships alone both the leader of Action and that of Italia viva risk not hitting the quorum. So they look for support elsewhere. Calenda questions +Europe, which, however, after the leader of Action broke with Emma Bonino in the general elections, has a tooth poisoned with him. Renzi looks to the center (right) but Maurizio Lupi, who is more than ready to forge an electoral alliance with the leader of Italia viva, is willing to do so only on condition that Renzi publicly declares that he prefers to stay in the field of the majority rather than in that of the opposition.
So for both Calenda and Renzi, the farewell is not exactly at no cost: the risk is that of finding oneself without a (political) partner and without a home (that is, a parliamentary group) in Italy and abroad. Yes, because there is not only the European problem of 2024: in the Senate, where Italia viva has more parliamentarians than Action, to form a group on its own, it should still ask for a derogation from Ignazio La Russa, in order not to end up in the Misto together with the Calendians. And this would be a nemesis for both: Renzi and the leader of Action forced to stay together anyway and moreover in a parliamentary patrol led by Giuseppe De Cristofaro, a leading exponent of the Italian Left, the party of Nicola Fratoianni.
Yesterday the two former (?) allies argued over the use of the symbol. This time Calenda, guest of Agorà on Rai3, began: «I think the parliamentary groups will split. We are now two separate parties.”
So the separation is a done deal, but it is the formalization of the divorce, as we said, which is slow to arrive: «I can’t leave a group that is also called “Calenda”. They can go away. They did it when they wanted », explains the leader of Action. Sources of Italia viva via agency promptly reply: «The group does not have the name of Carlo Calenda. The group that Calenda belongs to together with nine other senators is called Azione-Italia viva-Renew Europe». As if to say: if there is someone who has to go, it is the leader of Action. “And in any case it’s always the same story, Carlo argues with himself,” they say from Iv.
But the casus belli really doesn’t matter. Every day is different. Renzi and Calenda argue about everything: from funding to groups, to the list common to the Europeans, from the congress to the name on the symbol, to Renzi’s conferences in Arabia, to the resignation of Daniela Santanchè, from the direct election of the prime minister to the minimum wage. For the divorce, however, the next episode is awaited. And the next quarrel.