Commentary
Nearly 3 years later, it’s Elly Schlein’s last chance to fix the PD
Elly Schlein cannot be blamed for the long-standing strategic void. But three years after the party’s primaries, she can be blamed for failing to initiate a process of party reform, including regarding its organizational model.
It is clear: Elly Schlein is under siege. This itself is nothing new, but what is she doing to break out of this tough spot? Little or nothing – that’s all I can say at this point. The difficulties in which the secretary of the Democratic Party finds herself entangled have been highlighted in this newspaper before.
As Alfio Mastropaolo wrote, Schlein “is guilty of having avoided a more in-depth debate on the party’s program.” Carlo Trigilia said her approach has been to “focus on concreteness without a plan,” while Filippo Barbera pointed out the gap between expectations of change and the “stickiness” of a party that moves according to another logic entirely. All fair points. But I would like to draw attention here to the genuine trap in which Schlein now finds herself.
At the beginning, she faced an almost impossible mission: to save the party from the abyss into which it was plunging after the September 2022 elections. (By the way: it is astonishing how casually the so-called nobility of the party, from Prodi to Gentiloni, gloss over the causes that led the PD to lose six million votes between 2013 and 2022. Absolute silence on that topic. Yet it was a party with a “reformist” profile, just as they would like it to be now. So what went wrong? Oh, if only we had a clue...). This first phase was a success, above all because the secretary laboriously sought to restore the party's left-wing image.
But the “reformists” are not happy. Perhaps the time is coming to acknowledge the failure of the project to build a party that would hold together both the center and the left without managing to speak effectively to either. The PD is now polling at respectable percentages, but the current levels of support seems to have stagnated for many months, and there doesn’t seem to be much room for electoral expansion, first and foremost because the party is projecting an incoherent image of itself.
Once the phase of securing the party was over, the phase of rethinking and rebuilding should have begun – but it never did. There were at least two directions in which it was necessary to start working (without expecting immediate results): the political and cultural profile of the party, i.e. its project, and a profound reform of its organizational model and forms of internal democracy (two issues we have repeatedly discussed in this newspaper, and which need not be revisited here). Instead, there was little courage on display, as if there was a fear of venturing into unknown territory. However, the original flaws are worsening: a party without a clear identity, continuing to project an image of ambiguity and improvisation; a party without a theoretical and cultural framework, which does not have – or does not know how to use – the possible remedies, such as the Foundation for Political Culture that actually does its job.
The key limitation of the secretary's work over the last two years has been conceiving the party's political offering as a sequence of single issues, a succession of individual proposals that speak to one particular segment of society but most likely mean nothing to everyone else. Incidentally, it is precisely this absence of strategic vision that creates the conditions for political mishaps, as happened on the issue of the wealth tax. The union did its job by proposing a specific measure; the party should do its job by framing particular proposals within the context of a new fiscal and economic policy. It is unbelievable that, in recent days, they have fallen back into the exact same error made by Enrico Letta on the eve of the last general elections, when he proposed a mini-wealth tax to benefit 18-year-olds: a sensible proposal in itself, but one that was easily attacked and dismantled by the right, without yielding any electoral benefit for the left – quite the contrary.
Elly Schlein cannot be blamed for this long-standing strategic void. But three years after the party’s primaries, she can be blamed for failing to initiate a process of party reform, including regarding its organizational model. The PD is very often a party that is literally repulsive – one that repels those who offer their help – partly because it doesn’t know how to engage potential new members. And here lies Schlein's paradox: to change the party, she would need all those who supported her in the primaries, but they are wary of actually joining the party (to change, for example, the balance of power in local leadership groups), because the party's existing routine does not welcome new energy. And this is how the cycle of mistrust that Barbera pointed out is being perpetuated.
What can be done to activate these external forces? For example, she could announce right now that the next congress will be conducted featuring alternative political platforms (as the current statute allows). Perhaps the prospect of a venue where people can finally discuss and vote on issues such as rearmament could stimulate interest and participation. Without a real congress, the PD will die. This is why the next six months are Schlein's last window of opportunity: is she capable of launching a phase of program development in view of the elections? Will she be able to involve all the social and intellectual forces that are willing to engage on this playing field?
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/quasi-tre-anni-dopo-il-problema-pd-e-lultima-occasione-di-elly-schlein on 2025-11-18