Salvini's ultimatum: radical change of government or going to elections

• Tav: the Senate rejects the 5S motion, the opposition passes. The summit ended at Palazzo Chigi
• Tav, Zingaretti: Count immediately at Colle, it has no majority
• Tav, Berlusconi to Salvini: the vote is the best solution
• Salvini and the Manovra: "No to the game of the three cards, down the taxes and via the Tasi"
• Viminale, Salvini: "From social partners yes to Tav and no minimum wage"
• Salvini, tension with M5S: "No to other months of arguments. Toninelli? He is not up to par"
• Manovra, Conte: now phase 2 with a pact for growth

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Let Matteo Salvini mount tensions and fears. Then in the evening he knocks on the door of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. And it sets its conditions for moving forward: a revolution in government, with new names and a revised and corrected "contract" in League sauce, or it is better to end it here, immediately. And don't even dare to start a difficult business like writing your next maneuver from being separated at home.

Throughout the day, after the Senate broke into the Tav, Salvini's voices chase each other at the Quirinale, in conversation with the president of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. Official sources deny it. The Northern League leader - it is said - is with the loyalists to build the strategy and prepare the Sabaudia night rally. And while parliamentarians and under-secretaries leaguers, fans from months of the crisis, rush to celebrate the Roman coast, the atmosphere at the top of the government is getting colder. It is, when in the evening the vice premier introduces himself to Conte. For an encounter that sources Leghorn describe "long, calm and cordial", but that others tell how very tense.

Luigi Di Maio, struggling with pentastellate groups on the brink of psychodrama, is in the palace, but does not seem to have taken part in the interview. From outside, come the most disparate voices, like the one - fed by some members of the Northern League - which hypothesizes the polls on 6 or 13 October. But in the M5s house, where anxieties grow with the passing of the hours, it is a reshuffle that is prepared for us.

Conte has always said: if the government parties ask for it, he is ready for a government reshuffle, although he is happy with his team of ministers. This is the voice that runs all day in the palaces of power: that the leader of the League points to the replacement of the Minister for Infrastructure, rejected in the Chamber by the yes to the Tav, Danilo Toninelli. It is whispered that Giulia Grillo, Elisabetta Trenta and Sergio Costa may also ask for the scalp: with the Environment Minister he is furious because he attacked him for the story of his son on a jet ski. But it is to something more that the Interior Minister seems to be aiming for: a radical change in the government. According to some sources, he would also ask to replace Minister Giovanni Tria, who has shown himself to be too sensitive to the reasons for the EU budget rules. "Maybe," comments a source M5s: if a League were to go to the Ministry of Economy, he would have to take on a very difficult maneuver.

Those close to Di Maio let us know that if Salvini wants a reshuffle he must ask for it. Other pentastellate sources add that there is no mention of offering the League the scalp only of Toninelli or Grillo: if it has to be reshuffled, it also concerns the Northern League ministers like Marco Bussetti and Gianmarco Centinaio. As for the government contract, it can be discussed. But if Salvini asks to review the income of citizenship, it means that it is going to break. Calm and no unconditional surrender, say from the M5s, within which grows a frond for the crisis.

The pentastellates suggest that a "rimpastone" can be done, but in September, also because the Conte bis should pass by the Chambers. But the government and opposition parties are preparing for any hypothesis, including the one that Salvini asks Conte's "scalp". In the scenario of the vote, the intersection with the constitutional reform for the cut of the parliamentarians weighs: if the government fell immediately, the reform would jump; if we went to the vote later, we would have to wait for the technical times of a possible referendum (perhaps requested by the same M5s) and we could not call the ballot boxes by spring. And then the electoral law dossier would open: the current one, with a majority quota, seems to favor Salvini but - Matteo Renzi reasons - with the cut of the parliamentarians the parliamentary front would be wide (all except Lega and Fdi) for the pure proportional. Another factor that promises to weigh.