ROME — Matteo Renzi is back.

In a few hot weeks in August, the former Italian prime minister staged a comeback that saw him sweep back onto the political center stage while wrong-footing or wounding his three most powerful rivals.

By reaching out to his erstwhile enemies, the anti-establishment 5Star Movement, the 44-year-old former mayor of Florence known in Italy as “the demolition man” paved the way for new, more centrist government — a move that could sideline the country’s populist forces and bring Italy back in line with Paris, Berlin and Brussels after it had veered toward Budapest and Moscow.

After losing his job as Italian prime minister in 2016, and the leadership of the center-left Democratic Party (PD) last year, Renzi seemed consigned to irrelevance, reduced to a simple senator sniping at the political protagonists on social media.

His U-turn on the 5Stars last month caught his enemies off guard. After blocking an alliance with the party in the wake of last year’s general election, he suddenly announced he was ready to team up with his arch-foes in order to prevent Matteo Salvini’s far-right League party from surging to victory in a fall election.

“It’s a service I’m doing to the country and my effort to lend Europe a helping hand at a time when a disastrous Brexit is looming and the German economy has stalled,” Renzi told POLITICO in an interview while on a high-speed train running between Florence and Rome.

His volte-face knee-capped Salvini, one-upped his successor at the helm of the PD, Nicola Zingaretti, and put the 5Stars in a position of having to choose between holding onto power and their anti-establishment credentials.

“His knight’s jump suddenly re-opened games that looked like they were over,” wrote the Italian daily La Stampa.

Renzi’s Machiavellian move puts him in a win-win situation — able to claim credit for stopping Salvini but also in a position to dominate Italian politics should the new government start to fall apart.

The game changer

Before Renzi’s chess move, Salvini and Zingaretti were both ready to head for elections.

For the League leader, who pulled the plug on his nearly 1-year-old coalition with the 5Stars in August, it was a chance to consolidate a surge of support after a standout performance in the European Parliament election.

Having doubled his party’s share of the vote to 34 percent in less than a year, Salvini stood a good chance of being able to govern alone or with the support of a small, further-right party — creating a far-right government at the heart of the EU and putting him in a strong position to dictate the country’s choice of president in 2022.

For Zingaretti, an election offered the opportunity to get full control of his party by ridding himself of the lawmakers still loyal to Renzi, which make up the bulk of the PD’s presence in parliament.

The 5Stars, led by Luigi Di Maio, on the other hand, were desperate to avoid a return to the ballot box. The party had lost nearly half of its support since the last general election, and most of its parliamentarians faced term limits due to internal party rules.

A coalition government featuring the PD and 5Stars seemed unthinkable — mostly because of Renzi, who spent the year answering suggestions for such an alliance with a tweet hashtagged #senzadime
(#withoutme).

Meanwhile, Beppe Grillo — the founder of the 5Stars and the party’s spiritual head — had spent years launching insults at Renzi (“false,” “hypocritical,” “little moron,” “friend of the bankers,” “suffering from penis envy”).

Renzi, for his part, has wasted no time positioning himself as one of the government’s outside critics.

Yet Renzi’s abrupt announcement, made in an interview in newspaper Corriere della Sera on August 11, that he was ready to reverse his position on the 5Stars changed the game entirely.

Salvini was forced to crawl back to the 5Stars in an unsuccessful attempt to pull the government back from the brink, while Zingaretti had to reluctantly give his assent for an alliance with the 5Stars or risk losing control of his group in parliament.

And Grillo and Di Maio, facing a huge defeat if an election were to be held, made humiliating U-turns of their own, embracing the PD after having scapegoated them for years.

“For me, an alliance with the 5Stars is an enormous sacrifice,” said Renzi. “I’m doing it just to send Salvini home and save Italy’s economy. Given the current European context, I believe it’s important to strengthen the EU, but as long as Salvini is around, Italy will be irrelevant.”

The migration question

Italy’s new government will be fronted by Giuseppe Conte, the same prime minister who led the coalition between the 5Stars and the League, earning during his year in office the appreciation of figures as wide apart as U.S. President Donald Trump and European Council President Donald Tusk.

The former law professor, who once said he had traditionally voted for the center left, has swiftly moved his positions to the left, jettisoning in his proposals for the new government Salvini’s hard-line position on migration as well as the League leader’s proposal for a flat tax.

Renzi, for his part, has wasted no time positioning himself as one of the government’s outside critics, launching small grenades at Conte even as he prepares to support him in the vote of confidence needed to create the government.

“I have a very negative opinion on his work as prime minister with Salvini and Di Maio,” Renzi said. “But I will give him credit for having changed his mind on Salvini.”

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One of the alliance’s first major tests will be striking a balance on migration, moving away from Salvini’s angry assaults on NGOs saving migrants in the Mediterranean, while keeping pressure on Brussels to forge policies that take the pressure off Italy.

“Of course, EU rules on migration need to be revised, of course we need a Marshall Plan for Africa,” Renzi said. “It’s foolish to think we can welcome everyone, but surely everyone must be rescued at sea.”

The new alliance could also pave the way for the 5Stars to join one of the groups in the European Parliament, such as Renew Europe or the Greens, which so far have rejected them because of their partnership in government with the League.

“If there’s a positive aspect in this whole story it is that the 5Stars are reviewing their [Euroskeptic] positions to the point that their most moderate MEPs are negotiating with En Marche to join Renew Europe,” said Renzi. “This is only possible because they kicked out Salvini.”

A 5Stars official denied that discussions with La République En Marche, the party of French President Emmanuel Macron, are taking place.

Demolition

There’s another possible implication of Renzi’s sudden comeback: that in the long term, he and his lawmakers could abandon the PD to set up their own centrist, liberal party.

“The demolition man” has never hidden his ambition to replicate in Rome what Macron did to the establishment parties in France.

One of Renzi’s closest allies, Sandro Gozi, was elected in May as an MEP in France on Macron’s Renaissance campaign list.

Gozi, who served as undersecretary of European affairs in Renzi’s government, is among those who have to wait until Brexit to claim his seat the European Parliament. In the meantime, he’s serving as an EU adviser to French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

Renzi describes rumors of a break with Zingaretti as “boring gossip.”

For the PD, and Zingaretti in particular, Renzi’s U-turn poses a big risk. Having been forced against his will to back the formation of a government, Zingaretti is now exposed to the possibility that Renzi and his parliamentary troops could abandon the party, leaving the PD leader in control of an empty shell that contains only a brand and very few seats.

While Zingaretti describes the new government as one intended to last until the end of the parliamentary term in 2023, Renzi’s initial proposal was for an alliance of convenience to pass the budget and prevent an automatic hike in VAT due to take place at the end of the year.

Whispers in Rome have also suggested that Renzi will challenge Zingaretti for the PD’s leadership, though this would require him to win a primary — a difficult proposition given that polls continue to put Renzi as one of the most unpopular politicians in the country.

Renzi describes rumors of a break with Zingaretti as “boring gossip.”

“The issue isn’t where I’m going,” he said. “It’s that this sacrifice makes sense only if it has a European scope and not just a domestic one.”

He added: “We need to work together [with the EU] on important reforms, the fiscal rules, on migration. The competition rules need to be revisited, we need European champions … In addition to Macron’s leadership and that of [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, there’s a need for Italy, which will only be possible if we send Salvini home.”