Leaving the Euro has become the prime issue in Italian national media, trending ahead of social banlieu breakdown (due to putting immigrant refugee houses in the middle of the most abandoned, deprived areas) and the flooding that continues to plague the North East, (and now the North West too.

Thanks to the irrepressible and telegenic Salvini, leaving the Euro has become the top campaign call for the Lega (don't call in Lega Nord any more, the 'PADANIA" newspaper shut down yesterday).

The Lega has jumped 10% in the polls in the last three months. Theirs is a simple formula: show up near a refugee or Rom camp and tap into the growing racism, adding further incendiary rhetoric and urging the public to blame immigrants for all the woes inflicted by fallacious economic ideologies.

This has propelled him into the 'favourite son' position of Berlusconi (until recently occupied by wunderkind Renzi).

Salvini is also new BFF of Marine le Pen, so they have each others' backs too.

This bodes ill for immigrants but also for the Troika. Salvini is no economics whiz however and is unclear about how the transition back to the Lira would play out. It's all about political power for him, and I trust him no more than Renzi with regard to the fate of the country. Opportunism rules...

Like Marine le Pen (and Farage), he has found a 'lucky wave' of populist sentiment to surf. I shudder to think of any of them attaining more political power, but if they are blunt instrument needed to break the Troika's hold they they have my cagy support on that score.

Meanwhile I expect a surge of interest for the MV5* (who also would resort to canning the Euro but only if the threat didn't work) as they streamline their mediatic presence and spread their message, the only one in my opinion that carries genuine hope for the shake-up necessary to save this country for further perdition. Their platform is the only one sufficiently radical to upend the staus quo and give it a decisive, - dare I hope even conclusive - boot in the derriere.

This could only happen if Beppe took a step back into commentary, as his narrative had jumped the tracks and was barreling nowhere. I suggested this back in the spring, now half a year has been mostly wasted, providing a vacuum into which Salvini has tidily side-stepped. The Movement's lack of decisional clarity has cost them many voters who have drifted into the Lega's vortex meanwhile, or given up hope or interest in politics, perhaps understandably!

Meanwhile Renzi's obeisance to the Troika's every whim is rapidly plunging Italy further down the slope to default, thanks in part to Beppe's egomania. Thank FSM he has finally realised this...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty