Lega Nord Toscana

History

The party was founded in 1987 as the Movement for Tuscany (Movimento per la Toscana, MpT). In 1988, under the leadership of Tommaso Fragassi, the party changed name to Tuscan Alliance (Alleanza Toscana, AT).

AT participated to the 1989 European Parliament election within the coalition Lega Lombarda – Alleanza Nord. In 1989–1990 it took part in the process of federating the Northern regionalist parties, ahead of the regional elections. In February 1991 it merged into Lega Nord (LN), taking the current name, and since then it is the regional section of that party in Tuscany.

In the 1992 and 1994 general election Riccardo Fragassi was elected to the Chamber of Deputies (in 1992 along with Gianmarco Mancini), while his father Tommaso resigned from secretary because he rejected the alliance between LN and the centre-right Pole of Freedoms. In 1995, when the alliance was dissolved, R. Fragassi left the party in opposition to that break-up and formed the Tuscan Federalist Alliance instead. He would return into the fold ten years later.

The party's new secretary, Simone Gnaga, was elected to the Chamber in the 1996 general election. He would too leave in 1998 in order to join National Alliance. Between 1998 and 2006 the party was led by Vincenzo Soldati, a member of the party's libertarian wing. The party was then led by federal commissioner Luca Rodolfo Paolini, national secretary of Lega Nord Marche, from 2006 to 2008, when Claudio Morganti was elected national secretary. In the 2008 general election the party elected a deputy, Paolini himself, after almost ten years of no representation in the Italian Parliament. In the 2009 European Parliament election Morganti was elected MEP. In the 2010 regional election the party won 6.5% of the vote, its best result so far, and entered the Regional Council for the first time, with four councillors.

Despite these electoral results, Morganti's leadership was openly contested by many party members. In April 2011 Dario Locci, a regional councillor, left in protest. In September 2011 Morganti resigned from secretary and was replaced by federal commissioner Giovanni Fava. The move was not enough for Locci, who made no return, and another group of disgruntled members, including regional councillor Marina Staccioli, who left the party to form Tuscan Identity in December. In October 2012 the two remaining regional councillors of the party, Antonio Gambetta Vianna and Gian Luca Lazzeri, responded to the emphasis posed by the new federal secretary Roberto Maroni on the North and the establishment of a Padanian euroregion by changing the denomination of their group from "Lega Nord Toscana" to "More Tuscany". Vianna and Lazzeri were soon expelled from the party, which was left without regional councillors. In April 2013 also Morganti was expelled from the party. These internal clashes resulted in a dismal result in the 2013 general election, during which LNT garnered a mere 0.7% of the vote. In April 2013, after a long transition under the supervision of Fava, a new national congress was held and Manuel Vescovi was elected new national secretary.

In the 2015 regional election the LNT obtained its best result ever in a regionwide election by jumping from 6.5% of 2010 to 16.2%, while its candidate for president, anti-Euro economist Claudio Borghi, who was endorsed also by Brothers of Italy, came second with 20.0% of the vote. In the 2016 local elections the party won Cascina (Pisa), its first large municipality in the region: Susanna Ceccardi obatained 28.4% in the first round and 50.3% in the run-off, while the party got 21.3%.

Popular support

Lega Nord Toscana has been one of the weakest national sections of the federal party and had received only low digits until the 2015 regional election, in which it obtained its best result ever (16.2%). The party was particularly strong in the provinces of Lucca (20.2%), Pisa (19.1%) and Grosseto (18.9%).

The electoral results of Lega Nord Toscana in the region are shown in the table below.

Leadership