ROME: Roberto Vannacci’s new far-right party, Futuro Nazionale, is fast becoming a political headache for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Just four months after deserting Meloni’s coalition ally, the League party, the former general says he has attracted almost 100,000 paying members to his new movement, which is polling at around 4 percent and rising.
That may sound modest, but in a tight election due next year it could be enough to decide whether Meloni wins a second term, leaving her with a difficult conundrum — should she embrace him, and risk scaring away her more moderate supporters, or shun him, and hope that his momentum will fade.
Vannacci’s anti-EU, pro-Russia party will be officially inaugurated this weekend, presenting itself as an uncompromising, nationalist party, while accusing Meloni and her allies of going soft.
“We represent that right which is not faded, not wavering, not fearful,” Vannacci told a group of foreign reporters earlier this year after he abandoned the League, which is headed by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.
