On July 24, the Italian Senate lay half empty, as prime minister Giuseppe Conte answered claims that his interior minister is drawing on Russian oil money. Coy about evidence that Matteo Salvini’s aides had negotiated funds from Putin-aligned oligarchs, the premier said he did not yet have cause to lose confidence in the Lega leader. Salvini himself skipped Conte’s address, remarking that he had “less than zero” interest in what the prime minister had  to say. Also absent from the Senate was the other party of government — Luigi Di Maio’s Five Star Movement (M5S). Its senators variously claimed that they were protesting against Salvini’s conduct, or else objecting to Conte’s endorsement of the TAV rail project, long a target of M5S objections.

Thirteen months since its formation, tensions are mounting in the M5S–Lega “government of change.” This may not signal imminent collapse — there have been similar theatrics before, without this heralding an open split. And while Salvini may hope to “cash in” on his dominant position in the opinion polls by forcing an early general election, he can’t do this if the other parties — and the president — resist it. Yet the tone of exchanges between M5S, the Lega, and independent prime minister Conte is clearly harshening. Interior minister Salvini is openly disdainful of the premier — a weak figurehead with no base of his own — and has publicly cast doubt on M5S’s loyalty to the parties’ “contract for government.”

In fact, it’s hard to think of any issue on which M5S has stood up to Salvini. Fearing a split in the coalition, not only has M5S swallowed Lega plans to slash tax and immigration, but it has been curiously unmoved by its coalition partner’s shadier dealings — from its delayed repayment of €49 million of embezzled public funds to  Salvini’s move to break up picket lines outside a Russian-owned firm on the instigation of the Russian embassy. No longer just a blank screen onto which voters can project their own hopes, throughout its time in office, M5S has seen its base fragmented. Between the March 2018 general election and the May 2019 European contest, M5S slumped from 32 to 17 percent support — Salvini’s party rose from 17 to 34 percent.