Italy’s deputy PM asks Five Star Movement members to back him after party falls to third

The leader of Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S), Luigi Di Maio, is seeking a confidence vote from party supporters after a bruising defeat in the European elections.

Di Maio, 32, has been criticised after support for his anti-establishment party slumped by almost half in a year as it was usurped by its national coalition partner, the far-right League, which took 34.3% of the vote compared with M5S’s 17.1%. A revived centre-left Democratic party also unexpectedly eclipsed M5S to take second place.

“Over the last 48 hours everything has been said against me, declarations from all sides,” he wrote on Facebook.

The confidence vote, which poses the question: “Do you confirm Luigi Di Maio as the political head of the M5S?” will take place on Thursday on the party’s online platform, Rousseau.

“Nobody runs away. I have never shirked responsibility,” Di Maio said. “Before any other decision, today I have the right to know what you think of my actions. I want to hear the voice of the citizens who elected me as political leader a few years back.”

Di Maio, who is also Italy’s deputy prime minister and labour minister, said if confidence was renewed then he would “get down to work to change many things that aren’t working”.

The party had been penalised by a “high rate of abstention, especially in the south”, he said at a press conference on Monday, and needed to regroup in order to become more “effective and efficient”.

At that point, he had not been asked to resign by the party’s co-founder, the comedian Beppe Grillo. But he has come under pressure from M5S politicians. “The role of Luigi Di Maio has to be reviewed in light of this electoral defeat,” said the MP Carla Ruocco.

M5S often turns to Rousseau to make decisions and craft policy. The last vote was in January, when members chose to block a criminal case against Matteo Salvini, the co-deputy prime minister and leader of the League, for refusing to allow migrants to disembark from a rescue ship.

“We can only speculate if Rousseau will give him [Di Maio] a thumbs up or feed him to the sharks,” said Francesco Galietti, the founder of Policy Sonar, a consultancy in Rome.

Salvini led a much more aggressive electoral campaign than Di Maio, with many within his party criticising him for being too acquiescent towards the League leader.

“I think the opposite,” said Galietti. “Di Maio shot himself in the foot with continued attacks – the lesson is that if you call your ‘frenemy’ mafioso or fascist this will just play into the hands of your opponent.”

In the event of Di Maio being ousted as M5S’s leader, it is unclear who would replace him, although the most mooted politicians are the MP Roberto Fico and Alessandro Di Battista, a prominent party figure and former MP.

“Di Maio was picked in the first place as he was considered to be more moderate, whereas Fico and Di Battista can only do one thing: shout, especially Di Battista,” said Galietti. “Is that what the party wants? I don’t think so.”