Matteo Salvini, the 41-year-old leader of the anti-euro Northern League party, chose a bare-chested, bedroom photoshoot in a weekly magazine on Wednesday to underline his status as the newest sensation in Italian politics.
Despite the gimmick, Salvini, who took over his party last year after a financial scandal brought down its founder Umberto Bossi, has steadily emerged as a potentially serious challenger to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
An unexpectedly strong result last month in local elections in Emilia-Romagna, a stronghold of the left, showed that polls which rate him Italy’s second most popular politician behind Renzi translate into real votes.
The photos in …read more
Source: Newsweek
