Salvini resigns as Lega secretary to be able to run again

Matteo Salvini has resigned from his role as secretary of the Lega. This is not a departure from the party’s leadership, but a formal step necessary to be able to run again for the secretariat at the extraordinary congress scheduled in Milan on October 24 and 25.

Together with his resignation, the deputy prime minister announced an update to the party’s symbol, removing the reference to “Salvini premier” that had accompanied it.

The move is described as a step back required by internal regulations, championed by Calderoli; in the meantime, the party’s interim leadership has been entrusted to Rubba. It is therefore a procedural mechanism — the post must be left vacant before it can be won again through the congress — rather than a political discontinuity: Salvini himself remains the only announced candidate for his own succession.

The Milan congress comes at a time when the Lega is also discussing its own symbolic identity, as shown by the choice to remove the direct reference to the premiership from the logo, an element that had been introduced in a different phase of the party’s recent history and is now being set aside.

Both pieces of news — the formal resignation and the new symbol — were reported both through the deputy prime minister’s direct statements and through the national newspapers’ press review, which covered them on the same day. No reactions from other party figures emerge from the available material, beyond the reference to Calderoli’s position on the procedural necessity of the step.

The congress on October 24 and 25 therefore remains the event that will formalize the outcome of a process whose first act — today’s resignation — has already been completed. Until then, the party’s leadership remains in the hands of the interim leadership entrusted to Rubba.