Do we like them?

Do we like Elly Schlein?

Our score: 8 out of 10. A consistent record on LGBTQ+ rights, migrants, wages and climate, with a bruising row with Meloni and a party split on Ukraine keeping it off a 9.

Schlein is the Democratic Party's secretary, the leader of Italy's main centre-left party and the main opposition to Giorgia Meloni's government. Before that she spent 2020 to 2022 as vice president of Emilia-Romagna, holding the region's climate pact delegation. It's a long way from the outsider who rose through the youth movements of the left.

The biggest stoush on her plate is the Ranucci affair. Meloni said in July 2026 that Schlein and others had spent months building a narrative of allusions and insinuations about a bomb attack on the journalist's home, and demanded an apology after prosecutors put a businessman under investigation over it. Schlein, quoted by Meloni from a TV appearance, said she had never linked the government to the instigators. Where you land depends on whether you read her 2025 speech on press freedom as a general warning or as a pointed jab.

On migrants and workers her stated line is just as clear. She has opposed port closures and naval blockades, and she wants a minimum wage and a reformed immigration system, including the end of the Bossi-Fini law. On climate she calls for a deep ecological conversion and opposes a return to nuclear power. You can disagree with her policies, but none of that is harm.

Her record in office is mixed in the usual political way. In 2023 a centre-right minister blamed her for Emilia-Romagna's floods because of her climate pact role, and Pagella Politica found he had the title right but left out that the job was coordination, not control of emergencies. It declined to pin the floods on her.

The good stuff is mostly public service: nearly two years as a regional vice president, and showing up for LGBTQ+ causes in person. The honest gap is that most coverage of her is in Italian and political, so there's little on private kindness either way. No court case or misconduct claim turned up in our searches.

So: we'd back her. She earns a strong score on policy and no black marks on harm, but the Ranucci row and the party's splits keep it from a 10.