It was a result few had expected. When counting concluded, the new leader of Italy’s main left-wing opposition party was named as Elly Schlein, propelled to victory by the enthusiasm of younger supporters and non-party members in the Democratic Party’s open primaries.
At 37 Schlein became the party’s youngest and first female leader, a rarity in senior political office as someone who is in a same-sex relationship and has a multicultural, partly Jewish background.
She had rejoined the Democratic Party only in recent months, having been among the faction that quit under centrist then-prime minister Matteo Renzi, in objection to party policies she saw “becoming centre-right”.
On Sunday night she won a narrow victory over the party members’ favourite, the 56-year-old Emilia-Romagna governor Stefano Bonaccini. Schlein wept in front of the waiting cameras and vowed to unite the party and Italy’s divided left.
Schlein’s leadership will be a test for those who insist the way for the left wing to compete with radical right parties is not to move to the centre, but to offer a clear political alternative
“The doors are open. We must heal the fractures of recent years,” she said. “I feel a great responsibility to hold our community together ... to keep together its histories, the cultures that forged this party, without giving up a clear path.”
The decisive victory of hardliner Giorgia Meloni at the helm of a right-wing coalition in Italy’s general election in September was reiterated in emphatic wins for the right again in regional votes last month.
Aside from the political skill of Meloni , the dividedness of her opposition and its struggle to animate voters were seen as contributing to the results, as electoral turnout collapsed.
[ The Irish Times view on Italy’s election: a dangerous stepOpens in new window ]
Schlein’s leadership will be a test for those who insist the way for the left wing to compete with radical right parties is not to move to the centre, but to offer a clear political alternative.
In her campaign Schlein vowed to address economic inequality and the prevalence of precarious, low-paid work that prevents Italy’s younger generations from getting a start in life. Next on the list: to “confront the climate emergency with maximum urgency and seriousness”, safe and legal migration routes and search-and-rescue operations at sea.
These stances on climate and migration put the Democratic Party in stark contrast to the current government, which has sought to curtail the activities of rescue NGOs and has been a thorn in the side of attempts to pass the European Union’s Green Deal legislation.
With Italy’s ruling party and its opposition led by women for the first time, Schlein has been dubbed the “anti-Meloni”.
Meloni has styled herself as the defender of the traditional family and an opponent of “gender ideology”, and famously described herself “a woman, a mother, and a Christian”.
Schlein countered this mantra in a speech last September with a declaration of her own. “I am a woman, I love another woman, and I am not a mother. But I am no less a woman for this,” Schlein told the crowd.
A decision to volunteer for the Barack Obama election campaign in Chicago in 2008 was clearly formative. Its organising tactics were echoed in her own leadership campaign
Separately, Schlein has said she has loved men and women, and that her current partner is “not a public person and does not wish to become one”.
Born to academic parents in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Lugano – her mother was from Italy and the daughter of a noted anti-fascist Italian senator – Schlein has United States citizenship through her Jewish-American father. She moved to Italy for university, and became an activist in the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.
A decision to volunteer for the Barack Obama election campaign in Chicago in 2008 was clearly formative. Its organising tactics were echoed in her own leadership campaign, based around a movement called It Starts with Us, which collected contact details online to mobilise activism across the country.
Subjected to anti-Semitic abuse during the campaign, Schlein played down her Ashkenazi heritage, explaining to an interviewer that she was not Jewish because – according to Orthodox Judaism – this is passed through the matrilineal line.
Her surname comes from a grandfather from modern-day Ukraine – “from an Eastern European family that experienced the tragedies of the 20th century and emigrated to the United States”, as her website puts it.
Regarding Ukraine’s current travails, she told a recent interviewer that she supports “Ukraine’s right to defend itself, through every form of assistance”. But she also noted that “as a pacifist” she didn’t think “weapons alone will end the war”.
Her victory has been welcomed as a generational shift and a courageous choice for the Democratic Party, which has dwindled from a once-dominant political force to winning under 20 per cent in the general election. It was time, Schlein said during the campaign, for it to “change or die”.