A few days are left to a watershed event that could reshuffle cards
within Italian party politics. Matteo Renzi’s outliving seems to be depending
on the confirmation of the constitutional amendments on a national referendum
expected for the next 4 December. The question at stake is crucial. Not only
the constitutional reform has been promoted by his Democratic Party-led
government, but Mr. Renzi has been standing up in first person for the past
three years, both seizing the spotlight and grabbing the main political
debates. The resulting sense of open personalization would entail – in case of a
failure, that is a NO-vote victory – if not an immediate resignation, just an
attempt to go on after broad agreements with other main forces in Italian party
politics, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia in
primis, according to rumours.