Analysis
Beppe Grillo announced the death of the Five Star Movement – he’s not wrong
“As the creator of the M5S, I claim my right to call the death of the M5S,” Grillo said in a video published on his blog.
Time to roll the credits. According to Beppe Grillo, last Saturday marked more than just the end of the election campaign for the regional elections in Liguria: it marked the end of the Five Star Movement, the political force he founded 15 years ago together with Gianroberto Casaleggio, who later passed away in 2016. “As the creator of the M5S, I claim my right to call the death of the M5S,” Grillo said in a video published on his blog.
This is the final result of the escalation of the conflict between Grillo and Conte. After the controversy over the party’s constituent assembly that will be held on November 23 and 24 – with Grillo, the party’s guarantor and founder, disagreeing that it should have the power to change fundamental tenets or the party’s logo – Giuseppe Conte had let it be known that the €300,000/year contract between the party and Grillo, with the latter in the role of communication consultant, would not be renewed at the end of this calendar year.
Grillo’s latest statements open up scenarios of possible legal disputes, clashes over who owns the party’s brand, and court procedures featuring reams of paperwork. The courts will have their say on all such matters; however, one must also admit that Grillo is right on something: the original Five Star Movement no longer exists.
To grasp this point, it is enough to review the original positions that led it to become the number one party in Italy: transparency via streaming, the prohibition of alliances in the name of being neither right nor left, ascetic salaries, the centrality of the digital fetish embodied by the Rousseau platform, the absolute prohibition of access to public funding, and the limit on the number of mandates, for which there are now exceptions and which is about to be cast aside.
Most importantly, the political staff that led the party to its heights is no longer there. From this point of view, being in parliament had a similar effect on the M5S as opening a can of tuna: all the party figures whose names filled the rolodex of a reporter covering the M5S from 2013 to 2022 have vanished. In most cases they became consultants for the private sector, while a few have tried to reinvent themselves in other political formations. Two notable exceptions deserve a mention: Michele Dell'Orco, who was undersecretary for transport when minister Danilo Toninelli was minister, and Giuseppe Brescia, who was chairman of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, who have teamed up to launch the Flamingo Mediterraneo restaurant in Rome's Prati district.
Conte could hardly have gone about it any other way: the only path for him to become leader of the new M5S was to wipe the slate clean, even though that erased party history had allowed him to become prime minister in the first place. A few days ago, he explained that it had been him who had decided to push out Davide Casaleggio, who waited until the very last minute – practically until he needed to give back the keys to his M5S office – to open the Rousseau black box and finally hand over the list of members to the former premier who had meanwhile become the party’s leader.
In the video, Grillo said: “Whenever I see the M5S flag waving behind the Wizard of Oz [his nickname for Conte] talking about direct democracy, I feel a pit in my stomach.” He added: “He can make his own beautiful party, with his own manifesto, with his face – nice, likeable, sincere – with Oz as its name and 22 parliamentarians. He can get 22 percent – or if he goes and gets a prediction from Fassino [former PD secretary notorious for making wrong predictions] he can get 15. I’d even be willing to give him a hand.” However, he reiterated, “The M5S is no more. It has vanished. We all know it.”
It is also significant that this development came on the eve of the Ligurian polls, an electoral round which, along with Umbria and Emilia Romagna, was expected to lay out the strategic prospects of the M5S and its alliances.
As for Conte, he dismissed Grillo's provocation, advocating for the current path laid out for the party: “We have challenged ourselves and we are renewing, getting new oxygen, and in reality we are more active than ever.” It is, however, certainly the case that as of Saturday, the M5S has entered a different era: it has become definitively Grillo-free.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/il-siluro-di-grillo-alla-vigilia-del-voto-ormai-il-m5s-non-esiste-piu on 2024-10-27