Paolo Becchi on Beppe Grillo: his true plan? Kill the M5s

At the first electoral test bench for the new yellow-red alliance, the results are from horror movies. The sum of the votes of 5Stelle and Pd does not reach 30 per cent, more than seven percentage points less than the only affirmation of the League in a region that has always been red and, on paper, should have favored the center-left.

THE REAL DEFEAT
But the real loser is the M5S, which gives way to the whole front. The policies of 2018, that is a year and a half ago, had achieved 27.52 percent in Umbria, 14.63 percent in the May European elections and 14.55 percent in the five-year regional elections. On Sunday it fell to 7.4 percent, even below the Brothers of Italy, which is affirmed with 10.4 percent. An earthquake.

For Di Maio it was an epochal defeat. The person responsible for this disaster, however, is Grillo, who in August-September pushed the accelerator so that 5Stelle and Pd would go together with the government. We do not know what led Grillo to this political suicide, but it cannot be excluded that he has partly influenced a "cover" in the judicial case of his son. It is unbelievable that the story of Salvini's son was talked about for months, while only half-day of the alleged rape in the villa of Grillo.

What will happen now? Di Maio will say that the territorial alliances with the Pd are over, but the government will go ahead anyway, pulling a living. Grillo will continue to support the alliance with the Dems, both nationally and regionally, and with a recalcitrant Di Maio, he will focus on Giuseppe Conte, even if the parliamentary groups do not like the Prime Minister.
And they would be right.

Among the fight against cash, prison for evaders, compulsory positions and war against VAT, Conte is among those responsible for Sunday's debacle. Like that both the M5s parliamentary groups are divided into them and Di Maio no longer controls them. No one is able to replace him at the moment, but he is not even able to impose his will. The risk of an implosion of parliamentary groups, though not immediately, is real.

SOVRANISTA AREA
Meanwhile, Salvini managed to cannibalize the consent of the MoVimento. The sovranista center of the center – Lega and Fratelli d 'Italia – would have won alone even without the help of Forza Italia, which could instead still be useful in the southern and central regions. The regional elections in Calabria and Emilia-Romagna over the next three months will tell us the truth. Most commentators thought that the pentastellato votes would end up in the Democratic Party, and instead went largely to the League. This is the key to the next political elections.

If Salvini succeeded in intercepting the consent of the 5Stelle in the rest of the country, as he managed to do in Umbria, then for him there would be no more obstacles in the ascent to Palazzo Chigi. The pentastellata base is, yes, the one that once voted to the left, but a substantial slice is made up of VAT and angry games, all votes that, if they do not end in abstention, will end up in Salvini's arms. After all, the M5S is now a part of the Democratic Party. The center-left has swallowed the MoVement, which in order to conserve power and seats has fallen into the trap of the old politics. A citizen movement that lived among the citizens became a party of lawyers.

THE SQUARES
Closed in the palaces, the grillini have abandoned the real and virtual squares and the squares have abandoned them. By now it's too late to recover, fate is marked. The toy broke into a thousand pieces and nobody is able to repair it. Gianroberto Casaleggio had said he would leave the M5s if there was an agreement with the PD, now the voters, voting against that alliance, left the M5s en masse. Salvini has no choice but to conquer the other regions and then the whole country. It's just a matter of time. To do what? Here, if anything, this is the problem.

by Paolo Becchi and Giuseppe Palma