Lega leader Matteo Salvini is ready for a ministerial job in Giorgia Meloni’s likely new government, Lega sources said Wednesday.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) party won the September 25 general election at the head of an alliance with Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) party, putting her in a poll position to become Italy’s first woman premier.

A leading FdI MP, Fabio Rampelli, said earlier this week that he had not heard of any rumoured vetoes against Salvini getting interior minister, a post he filled from 2018 to 2019, standing out by denying access to Italian ports for NGO run migrant rescue ships.

Lega sources said Wednesday that Salvini had spent all day talking to representatives of Italian industry, commerce and agriculture, with these talks focusing on Lega’s priority policy of easing energy bills amid a cost of living crisis.

If the outgoing government does not take sufficient action on the energy crisis it will have to be the first concern of the incoming administration, said the Lega sources.

Salvini is said to be hankering after his old job as interior minister, but his position has been weakened by Lega’s relatively poor performance in the general election, with its vote slipping to 9 per cent from 19 per cent at the last election in 2018, and compared to 26 per cent for FdI.

Salvini has also been tipped to be Italy’s next agricultural minister.

Di Martino's tattoo. (Photo: ANSA)

Meanwhile, a row has erupted over an allegedly neo-fascist tattoo spotted on the arm of Cristiano Di Martino, the new Bologna chief of Salvini’s rightwing party.

The tattoo is a runic symbol used by the SS and banned in Germany, a wolf’s tooth under a fist holding a hammer.

It was a symbol of the subversive neo-fascist group Terza Posizione (Third Position), active in Italy in the Years of Lead, of leftwing and rightwing terror in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Di Martino told the Corriere di Bologna newspaper:

“I have never been part of that group; I had that tattoo done when I was a young lad because I’ve always liked Norse mythology.

“When I had it done, at the age of 16, I didn’t even know what Terza Posizione was” he said, adding, regarding the fist holding the hammer that “I’ve always been a fan of comics, and I like Thor.”

He went on:

“There are secretaries around with the (neo-fascist) Celtic Cross and I’m being crucified for a tattoo done in 1986?

“Sometimes in your youth, you do things that perhaps you might have done differently over the course of the years, but I’ve never had anything to do with that world.”

Roman-born Di Martino has been in Emilia-Romagna since 2010 and was once a provincial councillor for the now defunct centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party of Silvio Berlusconi in Ferrara.

In that capacity, in 2011, he took part in an event promoted by far right group CasaPound alongside Gabriele Adinolfi, a founding member of Terza Posizione.

Another former Terza Posizione member, Luigi Ciavardini, was among the neo-fascist terrorists found guilty of the August 2, 1980 Bologna train station bombing that left 85 dead and 200 wounded.

The head of the association of relatives of victims for that massacre, Paolo Bolognesi, said Wednesday:

“He (Di Martino) could have it removed; this is not a nice thing for Bologna. I’m amazed, let’s hope it’s not a sign of a time in which all kinds of things can be legitimized.”

He added: “Anyone engaged in politics should know what Terza Posizione is, and what its symbols are. It’s not a nice gesture.”