Beaten and divided, Italy’s centre-left seeks new leader

Italy’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD) will chose a new leader this weekend who it hopes can pull the group out of a tail spin and provide a credible challenge to the nationalist prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
PD supporters will have to pick between two starkly different candidates who offer opposing views on how to revive the party after a string of crushing election defeats.
The frontrunner Stefano Bonaccini is president of the wealthy, northern region of Emilia-Romagna. He promotes himself as a sound administrator and proven vote winner, who would seek cross-party alliances to defeat the ruling right-wing coalition.
He is up against Elly Schlein, a rising star of Italian politics who wants the PD to shift to the left and unite behind core values, such as gender equality, LGBTQ rights, climate change and labour reform.