The Guardian view on the new leader of Italy’s left: a feminist fresh start | Editorial

The surprise victory of Elly Schlein can galvanise the demoralised Democratic party

On the eve of last autumn’s crushing election defeat for Italy’s Democratic party (PD), one of the party’s youthful rising stars addressed a cri de coeur to a rally in Rome. “I am a woman,” said Elly Schlein, “I love another woman and I am not a mother, but I am no less a woman for this.” The words were a clever liberal rejoinder to Italy’s current prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who had famously signalled her social conservatism on LGBT+ rights and abortion with the formulation: “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian.”

This weekend’s surprise election of Ms Schlein as the first female leader of the PD ensures that this radical clash of perspectives – along with similarly clear blue water on inequality, the green transition and the migration crisis – is now front and centre in Italian politics. A startling turn of events, for a previously moribund centre-left it is also a potentially galvanising one.