Italian premier resigns

Prime Minister Conte decries anti-immigrant interior minister who engineered his demise and may succeed him.

ROME — Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte resigned Tuesday amid the collapse of the 14-month-old populist government, raising the possibility of new elections in the fall that could bring to power the anti-immigrant interior minister who engineered Conte’s downfall.

Addressing the Senate, Conte assailed Matteo Salvini for setting in motion a “dizzying spiral of political and financial instability” by essentially pulling the plug on the government. Salvini’s right-wing League party sought a no-confidence vote against Conte this month, a bold move for the government’s junior coalition partner.

Conte blamed Salvini for sacrificing the government’s survival in favor of his eagerness to become prime minister.

A lawyer with no previous political experience who was tapped to break a postelection stalemate last year, Conte struggled to hold together his often ideologically opposed coalition’s forces — Salvini’s right-wing League and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. He handed his resignation to President Sergio MattarellaTuesday night.

Mattarella, who is head of state, asked Conte and the rest of the government to stay on in a caretaker role. The president could test whether there’s enough support for a new government. Failing that, he might try to build a consensus to back a “neutral” figure to head a government whose main goal would be to lead the country through year’s end, enough time to make painful budget cuts to meet European Union parameters.

If no other path is feasible, Mattarella would have to dissolve Parliament. Elections could then be held as soon as late October — 3½ years ahead of schedule.

Salvini, who sat next to Conte during his speech, smirking at times, declared, “I’d do it all again.” He repeatedly kissed a rosary he slipped out of his pocket right after Conte rebuked him for associating “political slogans with religious symbols.”

Pressing for elections as soon as possible, Salvini said: “I don’t fear Italians’ judgment.”

Salvini’s crackdown on migrants, whom his party’s voter base largely blames for crime, appears to be a huge factor in his climbing popularity in the polls.