“I’ll be your Benigni” the Fincantieri shipbuilding-giant worker said to Schlein at its Castellamare di Stabia plant near Naples Monday afternoon, referring to the June 1983 stunt in which the anarchic PCI-mad comedian and filmmaker grabbed Berlinguer, who had an undeserved reputation for austerity, and made him grin as he held him up at a PCI rally in Rome, one year before his death at the age of 62.

The worker also gave Schlein a worker’s blue overalls saying “I’ll be your colour coordinator, too,” referring to the recent revelation that the PD’s first woman leader, elected in an upset at the end of February, pays a colour coordinator 300 euros an hour to advise her on what clothes to wear and how to avoid colour clashes.

Meanwhile, ahead of reform proposal talks with the PM, Schlein said it is not up to the opposition to choose whether to convene a Bicameral session of parliament to discuss and approve Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s proposed changes to the Constitution to introduce a directly elected head of state or government.

“A Bicameral? They’ll be the ones who will establish the instrument for discussion,” she said.

“We are more interested in the quality and the perimeters of the talks.

“If they have already decided how it’s going to end it won’t be a real discussion, it would be hard to discuss reforms if they continued to go ahead on some reforms like differentiated autonomy, which we are against.”

This form of enhanced autonomy among Italy’s 20 regions, pushed by the League party, has been criticised as potentially worsening the gap between richer northern regions and poorer southern ones.

Later, heading into talks with Meloni, Schlein said that they might work together on constructive no confidence, or rather the importance of having a fallback in place in the event of a no confidence vote in a government.

Talking to Tg3, Schlein did not comment on the main thrust of Meloni’s reform plans.

“We will bring some of our proposals that combine a reinforcement of stability but also of representation,” the PD chief said.

“For a start we must change this electoral law, enough with blocked lists, and then we can talk about constructive no confidence and we can reinforce the referendum bodies and popular lawmaking bills.”

ANSA