Grillo vs. Conte, there will only be one: but the 5 Star Movement risks disappearing

Warning to readers. This article is written with biodegradable information: dispersed in an open environment it could decompose and slowly disappear. Therefore it is perfect for annotating, processing, reformulating, through conversations with illustrious figures of the Five stars of yesterday and today and who knows if tomorrow, the latest misfortunes that the Movement faces, or pretends to face. In this long phase of analysis and even psychoanalysis, which has sucked the party in after the slump in the European elections below ten percent, a huge mistake is being made: to claim that only one will remain between the “founder guarantor and guardian of values” Beppe Grillo and the “president titular of political action” Giuseppe Conte. No. Here nothing remains. Disappear. The now ancient scheme of Grillo acting as a rude oracle and goading Conte and Conte acting as a sincere mannered person and ignoring him no longer works. Because while this is happening and everyone is trying to calm their personal grudges, for example Grillo can’t stand Conte’s phone ringing and Conte not answering and above all not calling back, the process of decomposition is activated, which is not reversible in political organizations of spontaneous origin, not structured, not rooted. Call Antonio Di Pietro or Pablo Iglesias Turrión. It happens that the Movement curls up on itself, slips into virtual consensus and then into real consensus, is overtaken by Angelo Bonelli and Nicola Fratoianni’s Avs, ends up in those dark places, the necropolis of the parties, where the attempts to remake Christian Democracy or the so-called Third Pole lie. And even, since everything changes nothing perishes, it is buried with a definitive split, a Movement with Grillo’s troops or Conte’s troops. Grillo and Conte are both the problem and the solution, but in order not to commit other gross errors, it is appropriate to frame the problem, or rather the problems, and then try to discover where the solution is hidden.

The Five Stars were created by Gianroberto Casaleggio with the support of Beppe Grillo with a series of rigid rules that over time have undergone sudden derogations. Casaleggio’s approach has allowed dozens of unknowns to become spokespeople in the elective assemblies of a popular request that, contrary to their mostly incomplete biographies, was more than obvious: remove/destroy the old party system, create a new system without traditional parties and without political professionals with greater participation. One is worth one, remember? There were no indispensable people. Casaleggio passed away eight years ago and did not witness the Movement of derogations and government. Casaleggio himself who has always maintained, and is often quoted on this crucial point, that every derogation cancels the rule.

The previous legislature, the Movement, capable of forming three governments with three different allies, right, left and even the technical one with Mario Draghi, has disavowed almost all the rules that raised it. The most relevant: it has become a vertical, personal, monodic party. One is not worth one. One is worth everything. It is the season of Giuseppe Conte. This season must be told with a turn on stage and another behind the scenes.

The scene shows an “organization chart” of the Five Stars which, in fact, is a bureaucratic document. At the top is precisely President Conte, the custodian of a political line that must agree only with Conte. He speaks little and badly with the guarantor Grillo. He doesn’t even speak much with the digital community (Davide Casaleggio left with the Rousseau platform and Conte has never felt nostalgic for it). The vice presidents, the guarantee committee, the board of arbitrators, the national council do not speak unless expressly authorized by Conte, they even refuse to speak on the phone, they are found busy with other matters, they reflect on what to say without ever finishing the reflection, they force themselves to have courage without ever having practiced it. Apart from rare exceptions, such as the former mayor Virginia Raggi who is inspired by the archetype of the Movement and yet was the first to obtain a waiver to run again for the Municipality of Rome to come fourth.

No one wants to nail anyone to the wall of derogations. Moreover, Conte is the product of an infinite sequence of derogations. Because Conte, and once again we refer to Casaleggio, has become indispensable. Or at least that’s how it appeared during the hectic summer of 2021. When Conte was hoisted to the top of the Movement despite Grillo having called him “incompetent”. The Five Stars were in the majority in the Draghi government and as usual comfortable in several seats. Conte was hurt, offended, actually bleeding after the suppression, which he considered an unfair palace maneuver, of his center-left government and above all he was surrounded by mourners who exalted his qualities. Even those in the Movement who didn’t think much of him or were detractors, however, recognized one thing: Conte was popular, a used, not worn out. The pandemic had inflated his self-esteem and the approval of the citizens. Conte was a refuge for many lost souls (and seats) of the Five Stars.

The pact on Conte was the pact on the third mandate. The exceptions. It was saddled by the regent Vito Crimi with immense effort and dramatic disagreements with Grillo. The arrival of the former people’s lawyer was the opportunity to set the internal rules and for the political elections scheduled for early 2023 (then it was Conte’s pushes that brought down Draghi and led to the polls in September 2022). At one point in these negotiations the most burning issue was touched upon: the third mandate, allowing the most prominent parliamentarians to run again and therefore climb onto Conte’s ark. With Casaleggio and the Rousseau platform removed, the obstacle was Grillo, guardian not only of values, but also of the symbol. The pact included Grillo’s approval for a handful of exceptions. The negotiations took place before and after Luigi Di Maio’s exit with a group of parliamentarians (June 21, 2022). Conte had to propose the lists, Grillo had to approve them. In a list of Conte to submit to Grillo there were Vito Crimi, Riccardo Fraccaro, Paola Taverna, Alfonso Bonafede, Giancarlo Cancelleri. For Grillo there were unacceptable names, he suffered it as a provocation. It has never been understood whether Conte’s list was an unintentional mistake or a stratagem of admirable cunning. In any case it was the trigger for an inevitable clean-up: out those who had reached two electoral mandates at any level, in veterans of the parliamentary groups already well-pruned by Di Maio and others promoted at the discretion of the president. Conte’s strategy was elementary: return to the minority and compete with the Democratic Party for supremacy in the center-left and one day, thanks to his ability to combine indiscriminately with the right and the left, return to Palazzo Chigi.

The polls predicted Conte’s ark adrift clinging to a complicated ten percent, far from the democratic fishing area and outclassed everywhere by the right with Giorgia Meloni at the bow, instead the Movement with the defense of the citizen’s income has resisted in the South asserting itself with a good 15.43 percent. Then Conte, who does not have the attitude of a leader, gradually began to reshape the Movement, to make it a classic party, with parliamentary groups of absolute loyalty, with a large headquarters in the center of Rome, with access to the “two per thousand” that last year brought in 1.85 million euros, resources also necessary to pay the 300,000 euro fee of the guarantor consultant Grillo who, after 15.43 percent, sank into the seas of silence. Lacking political experience after the crash course of governing with two executives in three years, Conte soon began to toy with the job of leader, often irritating the Democratic Party and focusing the media’s attention on himself. Rocco Casalino also disappeared from TV footage.

Elly Schlein’s victory over Stefano Bonaccini, however, overturned Conte’s plans and slowly reduced his political space. Having dismantled the basic income and condemned the building super bonus without appeal, Conte was left with the battle against the supply of weapons to the Ukrainians, a topic that does not heat up. The collapse in the European elections was more than expected. Conte could have cushioned it better with a partial derogation from the third mandate, nominating old flags of the Movement and authoritative and independent personalities. The case of Roberto Fico is the most emblematic. Former president of the Chamber, therefore the third highest office of the State, at fifty years of age in October he finds himself imprisoned within the limit of mandates. He is very active in politics and in particular in Campania, his region, the stronghold of grillismo. Conte could have rehabilitated Fico and other Fico-like people. He preferred to close himself in the bunker with a timid electoral campaign, in the theaters like Grillo, and hoped that the bang would not be too loud. It was very loud. He woke up Grillo. And the underground currents of the Movement have given signs of life. Even if faint.

Now Conte must act. In the short term he does not risk losing control of the Movement or those millions of residual voters, but in the medium/long term he risks losing everything. According to several politicians who frequent or have frequented the party, the Movement needs a turning point with a high emotional impact. Like the “V Day” in Bologna, the signatures for a clean Parliament, Casaleggio and Grillo’s Maalox, Conte’s hand on the shoulder of Matteo Salvini’s Papeete version, the nightly press conferences during the pandemic, the demonstrations with Grillo as the star. Conte is very wrong if he thinks he can remove and not solve the problem, the sources reason, leaving a bit of space in the phantom organizational chart for grillini like Raggi or founders like Fico or he gets involved in lucubrations on the broad center-left field. Grillo will not find peace until he has his satisfactions and Conte himself will not have peace until Grillo is satisfied. A nice dilemma. At least we will know if the Movement has become biodegradable. And the turning point will be exclusively environmentalist.