Do we like them?Do we like Giuseppe Conte?
Our score: 5 out of 10. A thin, mixed record: signed off hardline migrant decrees he later disowned, skipped Pride, but we found no hateful words or personal scandals.
Conte was a law professor with no political track record when the Five Star Movement and Matteo Salvini's League picked him to head a coalition government in 2018. He later switched partners and ran a second government with the centre-left until it collapsed in early 2021. He now leads the Five Star Movement from opposition.
The migrant story is the big one. In September 2018 he defended Salvini's security decree as respecting rights, and the decree carried his name as first signatory. By January 2020 he was saying any moment was a good one to revise it, and in 2021 he told Corriere della Sera the decrees had pushed tens of thousands of people out of reception. Right-leaning papers call that a U-turn; his supporters would say he fixed it once the partners changed.
On LGBTQ+ issues the record we found is thin. In June 2023 he said he would not march in Rome's Pride, quipping that he doesn't go to birthdays or weddings, and Il Foglio's headline had MP Riccardo Magi calling that proof he is a fake progressive. That's a rival's read of one absence, not a hateful word from Conte. We found nothing from him on trans rights either way, and nothing on climate or Gaza.
On Covid, prosecutors in Bergamo investigated his government's pandemic response, and the ministers' tribunal shelved the case against him and former health minister Roberto Speranza in 2023. That didn't end the politics. In 2026 Brothers of Italy MPs wore masks in the Chamber and demanded he step down from the Covid commission, and reports say he asked to be heard there to answer what he calls false accusations.
The good stuff is harder to pin down from what we could read. We found no record of him mistreating colleagues, no lawsuits over personal conduct, and no sign of conspiracy theories or grievance politics from him. That is a clean sheet, but not a long list of kind acts either.
So it comes out mixed on harm and a pass on nice. The migrant decrees and the Pride snub keep him out of the clear-pass pile, and the gaps in the record mean we're not shouting about it either way. Treat it as a cautious maybe, and check how he votes on rights before you cheer.