If it weren’t for the pandemic, Giuseppe Conte’s government might not have lasted even this long. Last February, neoliberal centrist Matteo Renzi threatened to split the ruling center-left coalition, only to fall back in line. But even as COVID-19 again rages through Italy, Renzi is today pulling out his Italia Viva party’s ministers — and pushing the government toward collapse.

Prime Minister Conte has confronted several major crises in his short career. In June 2018 the law professor became figurehead of a coalition uniting the eclectic Five Star Movement (M5S) and Matteo Salvini’s hard-right Lega. When Salvini quit in summer 2019 in a failed bid to force elections, M5S made an opposite deal with the center-left parties, and Conte stayed on as premier.

Conte is not a party member and was an obscure figure upon his initial appointment. But both his ability to form a new coalition two summers ago, and his initial response to the pandemic, have raised his standing. Though he has no parliamentary base of his own, Conte has become an icon for many on the soft left, and even identified as a future M5S leader.