Matteo Salvini calls for supporters to stage big demonstrations in protest against new coalition

Matteo Salvini has called on his supporters to converge on Rome to protest against the coalition that is being formed between his former allies and Italy’s centre-Left.

The leader of the hard-Right League told Italians that they have not seen the last of him, despite his botched attempt to force an election which he hoped would lead to him being made prime minister.

He called for demonstrations to be held in September in Pontida, in the League’s northern heartlands, and in Rome in October, which he said would be “a great day of Italian pride”.

As negotiations continued to form a new government consisting of the Five Star Movement and their former foes, the Democratic Party, Mr Salvini gave a farewell address to colleagues at the interior ministry in Rome.

The outgoing interior minister, who was also deputy prime minister until the previous coalition imploded, told them it was “not a goodbye”, predicting that “sooner or later” the new government will collapse and a general election will be called.

“They might last a few months or years but in the end, they will find us ready. You have not seen the last of me, that’s for sure,” he said.

The cobbling together of the new coalition between two parties which have fared poorly in the opinion polls represented a “theft of democracy”, he said.

When Mr Salvini declared his coalition with Five Star was dead on August 8, he calculated that Italy would go to new elections that would result in him emerging as head of a victorious hard-Right alliance.

He did not count on his former allies, Five Star, swallowing their pride and forging a new pact with the Democratic Party, whom they previously reviled as smug, ineffective elitists.

But Mr Salvini, whose party is still Italy’s most popular, will be a formidable opposition leader.

He has claimed, without evidence, that the new coalition is a creation of pro-EU figures such as Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel.

The likely new government was “born in Brussels in order to get rid of that pain in the neck, Salvini,” he said.

But the European establishment would not be able to get rid of him and the “ballbreakers” of the League so easily, he said.

His belief that the awkward alliance between Five Star and the Democrats lacks popular support appears to be borne out by the latest polls.

A survey by the polling agency Piepoli found that 55% of Italians have little or no faith in the new coalition.

However, confidence in Giuseppe Conte, who resigned as prime minister last week only to be reinstated, is up by five points, whereas trust in Mr Salvini is down by six points, indicating that the political turmoil has damaged his standing.

“Salvini needs to come here and tell us why he threw everything away,” Maria, 65, a League supporter in northern Italy, told one Italian paper.

“We were in government and now we’re out. He owes us an explanation, and quickly.”

Analysts tend to side with Mr Salvini’s conviction that the new administration may be doomed from the start.

Five Star and the Democratic Party are “unnatural allies, which are still divided by a deep sense of mutual mistrust,” said Wolfgango Piccoli, of the Teneo political risk consultancy.

Both suffer from “weak leadership and significant intra-party cleavages.”

“The unedifying show put together by both parties during their coalition negotiations will be likely followed by a similar performance once they are in office,” he said.

For the League leader, nicknamed by his adoring supporters “Il Capitano”, the fightback will begin in earnest with local elections in Umbria on October 27.

He can count on the support of much of the country, having increased the League’s standing from 4% of the national vote when he took command in 2013 to close to 40% in recent weeks.

Mr Salvini received a message of support from Hungary’s hardline leader, Viktor Orban, who has been accused of suppressing press freedom, pandering to xenophobia and encouraging anti-Semitic prejudice.

“We Hungarians will never forget that you were the very first Western European leader who intended to stop the influx of illegal migrants into Europe through the Mediterranean," said Mr Orban, who has long professed admiration for the League leader.

He called Mr Salvini a "fellow combatant" in the fight for the "preservation of European Christian heritage and against migration".

Mr Conte, the prime minister-designate, held more talks with political parties on Friday and is expected to present a list of ministers to Sergio Mattarella, the president, next week.

Italy needs to “recover its central role in Europe,” he said, warning that “this is a very delicate phase for the country.”

If agreement can be reached between Five Star and the Democratic Party on an agenda and how to apportion key cabinet posts, the new government will then face confidence votes in both chambers of parliament.

Five Star’s involvement in the coalition will also be subject to an online vote among its grass-roots members.