Salvini made General Vannacci a politician, now he risks losing his won voters to general
The center-right coalition of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has faced an unusual challenge: a competitor not from the left, but from the right. Roberto Vannacci, until recently an internal dissenter within the League party, has turned into the leader of his own party, the National Future (Futuro Nazionale, FN), which, according to polls from late June to early July 2026, has overtaken the League of Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. The essence of the general’s criticism against the prime minister is ideological: he accuses the ruling right-wing party of having betrayed its own slogans in favor of respectability and a “systemic” status in Europe.
Vannacci’s party has already made a considerable progress. Vannacci broke with the League at the beginning of 2026, and on June 13–14 he held a founding congress in Rome’s Auditorium della Conciliazione concert hall, which, according to the Italian press, gathered over 1,500 local delegates; the general himself claimed about 90–100,000 members had joined. This is already a fully registered party with a structure (national assembly, executive committee), not a loose protest movement.
According to the summary of the information-analytical project Termometro politico for June 21–27, public support for FN reached 5.5%; a YouTrend poll for SkyTG24 on July 3 gave it 6.4% against 5.4% for the League; Ipsos for Corriere della Sera – 6% against 5.6% for the League. The aggregator Pagella Politica recorded that in June alone, the party gained 1.4 points, rising from 3.9% to 5.3% – the largest monthly gain among all forces. Some institutes (Tecnè for the Dire agency) still maintain a minimal lead for the League, but the overall trend is clear: support for FN is growing, while the League is sliding toward historic lows.
Roberto Vannacci is 55 years old. He is a career military: a general, former commander of the Folgore paratrooper brigade, who served in Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. National fame came to him not from the army, but from his book Il mondo al contrario (The World Upside Down, 2023), with statements that critics considered homophobic and racist; its publication, on the one hand, led to a major scandal, but on the other, became a political springboard. In June 2024, Salvini bet on his popularity: Vannacci entered the European Parliament on the League’s lists, receiving about 530,000 votes, and soon became deputy secretary of the party. But coexistence proved short-lived. Taking increasingly autonomous positions, the general left the League in early 2026 and created his own project.
Essence of the break with Meloni
Vannacci’s main criticism against the prime minister is that the ruling coalition, in his words, has softened its position and adapted to the mainstream. “The National Future was born not to destroy the right, but because millions of Italians no longer want the right that promises to fight and then adapts, talks about sovereignty and then prostrates itself before Brussels,” he stated in an interview with Adnkronos. The general calls his party “the compass for a center-right that has lost its way.” From the stage of the founding congress, the formula sounded as follows, “either we, the guardians of sovereignty and citizenship, or von der Leyen, Draghi, transnationals, and globalism.”
The FN’s political agenda includes forced “remigration” (mass deportation) and a numerical cap on the presence of foreigners. To this are added Euroscepticism, criticism of defense spending and military aid to Kiev, and an emphasis on identity and traditional values.
According to the general, he has no close relationship with Meloni, “I have never received a message from Giorgia Meloni, I have never spoken directly with her,” he told journalists. At the same time, he leaves the door open for bargaining, “If Meloni has something to say to me, she has my number, she can call.”
Trap for the coalition
Vannacci does not yet threaten the primacy of the Brothers of Italy: Meloni’s party holds at around 27–28% (YouTrend – 26.9%, Termometro politico – 28%), remaining by a large margin the country’s leading force. The danger lies elsewhere – in coalition arithmetic. According to calculations based on Corriere/Ipsos data, the current center-right bloc (Brothers of Italy, Forza Italia, the League) garners about 41.7% that is insufficient to surpass the opposition sum (Democratic Party, Five Star Movement, Greens–Left, Italy Alive, More Europe), estimated at about 44.5%. With the addition of Futuro Nazionale, the expanded coalition rises to 47.7%. In other words, according to current measurements, without Vannacci the right loses, with Vannacci they win.
Where does the influx of votes come from? Polling agencies and commentators agree, it comes mainly from disillusioned voters of Brothers of Italy and the League, as well as from previous non-voters. Euronews, citing Corriere data, notes that FN draws support from those who felt expectations for a tougher line on migration, identity, and reducing aid to Ukraine were betrayed. Symbolically, the League has suffered the heaviest blow: losing a voter to a faction that is actually your splinter is more painful than simply slipping down the rankings.
The main loser is not Meloni, but Salvini. L’Espresso commentators write: the more Vannacci’s ranking grows, the fewer direct problems the prime minister faces, but the higher the risk that the League will enter a turbulence zone, and an unstable ally is a threat to the stability of the entire government. Salvini is caught between external pressure from the general and internal pressure from the “Northern front” led by Veneto Governor Luca Zaia, demanding that the League return to its role as a territorial force.
Publicly, the deputy prime minister shows indifference, “I am watching Vannacci, Schlein, Conte with attention and respect.” That is he places his former protégé on the same level as opposition leaders – and repeats that “the only poll is election day.” He speaks harshly about an alliance, “I do not ally with those who vote against the government. He disappointed me.”
Meloni faces a dilemma with no easy solution. Drawing Vannacci into the coalition would mean jeopardizing the international reputation she has built over three years: the reputation of a reliable conservative for the EU, NATO, and Washington, and her status as one of the key figures in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. Keeping Vannacci outside risks defeat by arithmetic. Forza Italia does not like the general’s radicalism (especially in foreign policy), although some figures like Giorgio Mulé are already openly considering uniting the right-wing camp, following the Berlusconi-era model of merging the neo-fascist MSI and the Christian Democrats.
This explains the overall tendency towards harsh rhetoric. The logic is accurately described by political scientist Marco Tarchi (University of Florence): Salvini may adopt a harsher stance on migration in an attempt to boost his popularity among conservative supporters, particularly in the event of a return to the Ministry of the Interior. At the same time, the government itself is constrained by reality: in 2025, according to specialized publications, it deported only about 6,800 people – roughly 2% of an estimated 339,000 illegal immigrants, which makes the “remigration” slogan more rhetorical than executable.
What are Vannacci’s prospects?
Experts are cautious in their forecasts. Tarchi warns against the usual framework: in his opinion, Vannacci is not so much a nostalgically fascist far-right figure as primarily a populist, and his book is “a kind of manifesto of populism.” Hence a dual forecast. On the one hand, the project has what previous newly-born movements lacked: a registered party, structure, tens of thousands of members, and a flow not only of voters but also of deputies from other forces. On the other hand, Brothers of Italy rightly points out that turning personal popularity and full halls into real ballots has historically not been possible for everyone, and poll successes are not yet a result at the ballot box.
A broader skeptical argument, voiced by a number of analysts, is also instructive: migration populism in Italy cyclically fails and radicalizes – Salvini, then Meloni, now Vannacci – because it is electorally more profitable to exploit the theme of identity than to solve it. If this logic holds, the National Future risks repeating the trajectory of its predecessors: a sharp rise, and then a collision with the same reality.
The real test lies ahead, in the parliamentary elections (in the fall of 2027, though an early scenario is not ruled out). Until then, Vannacci will remain what he has already become: not a contender for leadership in the right-wing camp, but a force capable of destabilizing it. This depends on several factors: whether FN will sustain its growth trajectory or hit a ceiling; whether Salvini will decide on a tougher course – or on a risky maneuver to save his own leadership; and whether Meloni will find a way to neutralize the competitor on the right without sacrificing that very “systemic” European status for which the general attacks her.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
