By Angelo Amante
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s 5-Star Movement will sever ties with its founder, comedian Beppe Grillo, due to his “acts of sabotage”, party leader and former premier Giuseppe Conte said in book excerpts published on Thursday.
Conte has repeatedly clashed with Grillo since he took the reins of Italy’s second-largest opposition party in 2021, gradually turning what was once a radical protest movement into a more mainstream left-leaning force.
In excerpts from a book by TV news anchor Bruno Vespa, Conte said “something had cracked irreversibly” in his relationship with Grillo, who still has a formal role as guardian of the party’s founding values.
“The clash is not Grillo versus Conte, but Grillo versus his own community,” Conte said.
Conte said he would not renew Grillo’s 300,000 euro ($324,000) annual contract as communications adviser for 5-Star, accusing him of running a “counter-communication” machine and saying it was impossible to work with him.
Grillo, who runs a popular blog that was once his party’s mouthpiece, did not immediately react. But his staff told the Adnkronos news agency that it was unaware his contract had been terminated.
Founded in 2009, 5-Star rocked Italian politics over the following decade, winning 25% of the vote in 2013 and entering into government five years later.
It has lost steam in recent years, weakened by policy U-turns and internal feuding, and it currently has slightly less than 12% support ratings in polls.
Conte launched what he called a “constituent assembly” to revive the party after a poor result in June’s EU Parliament elections, when 5-Star won fewer than half the votes of the main opposition force, the centre-left Democratic Party.
In the past Grillo, who is well-known for his outspoken language, accused Conte of lacking political vision and criticised what he saw as an attempt to turn the once-maverick 5-Star into a traditional leader-centred party.
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(Reporting by Angelo Amante, editing by Alvise Armellini and Hugh Lawson)