Salvini planning comeback and alliance with Trump and Johnson
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Matteo Salvini is planning his comeback, and wants to form an alliance with Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and the leaders of Israel and Brazil.
The leader of the far-right League party and former Italian interior minister believes he’ll be prime minister in 2020 and wants to improve relations with EU partners when that happens — at the same time as pushing his “international front.”
POLITICO reports that Salvini believes his comeback is close as the new coalition struggles to agree on crucial policy issues and reboot the country’s stagnating economy. “I am using this time in opposition to forge new alliances and expand my network,” Salvini told Italian daily Libero in an interview published Monday.
“Conte’s new government has already lasted too long. I met entrepreneurs, factory workers, young people, immigrants too … They are fed up with them,” Salvini said. Salvini said he plans to focus on improving relations with Germany and France once back in government, and believes he can drive change in Brussels.
In other news, in Italy we read that the Italian Civil Protection issued a yellow severe weather warning for the Tyrrhenian coast of Sicily and the island’s central-eastern areas were expecting heavy rainfall on Monday.
The Italian birthrate in 2018 hit a new low not seen since the time of Unification in 1861, said Italian statistics bureau ISTAT in its annual statistical yearbook released Monday. It said there were 439,747 live births in 2018, compared to 458,151 in 2017. It said average life expectancy at birth was up in 2018, however, to 80.8 years for men and 85.2 years for women. ISTAT said these factors mean Italy has one of the oldest populations in the world. It said households made up of single people were on the rise, having grown more than 10% in the past 20 years to become one-third (33%) of all Italian families in 2018.
