Elly Schlein crashes: Behind the scenes, that warning from Berlin that she continues to ignore

The 16.5 percent of the vote that the German Social Democrats got, in an election round with a very large turnout, with well over 80 percent now unimaginable in Italy, should give pause to thought to the secretary of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein . She too has begun to register a certain tendency to decline in the polls since she opposed her declared stubbornness, in the pursuit of opposition unity, to those in the party who are champing at the bit for the radicalization of the line. And this in order not to lose along the way the left of Nicola Fratoianni and Angelo Bonelli , but above all that fried mix that has become the 5 Star Movement under the increasingly personalized and maximalist leadership of Giuseppe Conte . Unlike Germany, where the Social Democrats under a leadership other than the defeated Olaf Sholz , can think of a recovery by collaborating with the German DC of the next chancellor Friedrich Merz , Schlein in Italy has no safety net or reserve on which she can count.

If she can't even get along well with the reformists in her party, fearing the backlash that would come from her relationship with Conte, imagine if and how she will be able to cultivate the alternative plan suggested to her by that crafty Dario Franceschini . Which is to bet on the collapse of the center-right to hook up with Forza Italia of Antonio Tajani, finally aware of the lottery ticket he would have in his pocket by breaking with Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini . And becoming - Franceschini always said in the auto repair shop where he opened his new office - the swing vote of every government. In Italy, Meloni is not like Alice Weidel in Germany, with her far right marginalized even with the almost 21 percent achieved in the elections, doubling the votes compared to four years ago and placing her Alternative in second place in the ranking of German parties.

Meloni is made of a different stuff. And she knows how to hold the center-right coalition she leads well, despite the tensions amplified by her adversaries: better than Schlein at the Nazareno, grappling with about ten currents by now, as many as I have seen counted by the specialists of the formation produced by cold fusion, in 2007, among the remains of the PCI, the Christian Democrat left and various undergrowth. It is disconcerting, to say the least, the secretary of a party that should be the animator and the linchpin of the alternative to the center-right and cannot find a topic or a place to participate in some of the demonstrations organized to show solidarity with Ukraine on the third anniversary of the war of invasion started by Putin's Russia with the unrealistic aim of ending it within three days.

Yet Schlein had challenged Prime Minister Meloni in recent days to side with Ukraine rather than with American President Donald Trump, who is determined to reach an agreement with Putin even at the cost of attributing to him the part of the attacked, rather than the aggressor. Schlein evidently considers others to be of the same ilk as her. She covered her ears and eyes so as not to hear and see Meloni repeat, in connection with the assembly of American conservatives, that the attacked is Ukraine and the aggressor is Putin. Meloni's world is not as upside down as Schlein would like to console herself and try to get out of the alley - that one, yes - into which she has dragged the Democratic Party. Where sooner or later I think she will have to pay the price for a somewhat rogue management. Hearing Meloni, in a parliamentary scene organized with lots of signs, called the president of the rabbit, rather than of the Council, by a party secretary who was unable to find, or hesitated until the last, if she had ever thought about it as I write, a place to confirm solidarity with Ukraine on the third anniversary of its invasion, was the height not of harshness in the political clash, but simply of comedy.