Elly Schlein is to become the new leader of Italy’s Democratic Party (PD). In some respects, her victory in Sunday’s primary was clearly something of a breakthrough. Not only is Schlein young — at thirty-seven years old — and an openly bisexual woman, but she is a relatively left-wing figure who had earlier quit the PD in 2015, in dispute with the neoliberal direction imposed on the party by then prime minister Matteo Renzi. Having returned to PD ranks just a few weeks ago to run for the leadership, she has become the first female leader — segretaria, as Italians would say — of the country’s main center-left party.

Schlein was propelled to victory by a significant mobilization in the primaries (which saw about one million voters — a decent turnout, if a sharp decline from previous contests). In so doing, she overturned the earlier result in the vote held among party members alone, in which the more right-wing candidate — Stefano Bonaccini, who is president of the Emilia-Romagna region — had prevailed.

Schlein’s victory was based on a program that says some distinctly left-wing things about labor precarity, the minimum wage (Italy doesn’t have one), equal marriage, and immigration. But she also won with the backing of most of the PD national leadership, meaning the same figures who supported a series of neoliberal leaders and “national-unity” governments in recent years, just as Schlein herself worked side by side with Bonaccini in regional government.