Dear Democratic Party, what does it mean to be ‘in favour of common defence and against national rearmament’? Does a common defence mechanism exist today that can be immediately funded and made operational? No, there is not. It is a bit like being in favour of recovery from an illness but against the treatment at the same time. There is no alternative, the only way forward is to proceed immediately with the rearmament of the individual states by providing for interoperability between them and between the individual defence systems, as already envisaged in the plan presented by the President of the European Commission, then proceeding with the reforms that, with their own timeframes, will design the new institutional profile of the Union.

What common defence does the PD want, and with the current rules, perhaps one that would allow Orban to block any move deemed necessary by the other 26?

Putin, Trump and even Xi make decisions in a matter of minutes; Trump even upset the eighty-year world order with a post on X. And we have to stand by the sophistry of certain leftists who in this case become allies of the worst Trumputinian right wing in curbing Europe’s security race?

Even the UK and Canada, historical allies and neighbours of the US, have realised this and have not given a second thought to attending the enlarged EU summits and saying ‘we’re in too!‘ But no, the Democratic Party, a party that is supposed to be a system party, a party that has (or had?) in its DNA the bearer of the best European political traditions, the liberal, the social-democratic and the popular, gets lost in the typical distinctions of a university collective assembly. A party that, in its majoritarian vocation, instead of representing a governmental alternative (secret: you win elections if you manage to win the votes of those who voted for others the previous time), dicks around and, by dicking around, distances itself not only from the rest of the European social democrats, but also from Prodi, Gentiloni and Picierno.

At the moment we have, on the one hand, a government leader who, like it or not, at least tries to play a role on international tables, and on the other, a student representative who is too ideological and very little pragmatic.

And while it is true that Meloni in opposition has been more ‘student-like’ than Schlein, the Dem secretary already has on her side all that movementism, anti-systemism, fanaticism and revanchism can be, and in a confrontation with her own allies she would lose due to the manifest involutional incapacity not so much of the current leadership, which even manages to praise Salvini, as of the Democratic Party structure that still maintains traits of dignity and seriousness.

We are already imagining the street demonstrations in which Conte and Salvini, as good Trumputinian collaborators, will be together, as in the days of the Yellow-Green government, to shout populistically that the money is needed to build schools and hospitals and, while it would be a good idea to remember what happens, in the absence of defence to schools and hospitals in the presence of military aggression, we can also venture the prediction of the presence of Elly Schlein, who loses no opportunity to declare that she, secretary of Prodi and Gentiloni’s Democratic Party, is“neither with Trump nor with Europe“, even going so far as to boast that she has the same positions as Salvini on European (non-)defence.

Putin and Trump know well that Italy is the weak link in the European Union and in fact on Italy they have focused part of their ‘attentions’ between collaborators on the right, paradoxically less and less, and useful idiots on the left who are now scrambling to crowd the scene.

And even if the centre-right coalition is apparently divided,with Salvini who, by now almost in embarrassing solitude even with respect to his own party, is daily trying to outdo himself in the boutade ranking (and receiving the applause of the PD leadership), the left, which by now has lost its centre, can no longer even play on the possible embarrassment of the Prime Minister, because it now seems obvious that Giorgia Meloni has decided to stay in Europe, with Europe and Ukraine, while trying to play, thanks to her good offices – which we do not know how long they will remain good – a bridging role between Trump and the EU. And even less does her mantra of cohesion funds work because it has already been declared that those, in Italy, to buy weapons, will not be used.

So, dear PD, today it is you who must decide and tell us which side you want to be on and what you want to be. And the spectacle offered in the last week does not bode well.

PS: but then, dear PD (or maybe it would be better to say ‘dear Elly’), are we sure that the supporters of civil rights and civil liberties are willing to lose everything to chase an ideological tare that induces certain left-wingers to the supercazzola about ‘national rearmament’ while Europe risks being overwhelmed by the Putin-Trump axis that daily and systematically wreaks havoc on civil rights and civil liberties? Are we really sure that the ideological fervour and the pursuit of a mannerist pacifism are worth the next Trumputinian proconsul who even in Europe goes on TV with a cross drawn on his forehead or firing workers as if it were a TV show?