The end of Italy's first post-war government experiment with far-right populists marks a stunning defeat for League leader Matteo Salvini, but his political career is far from over.
Outgoing interior minister Salvini on Thursday railed against the "little government" that has replaced him, but he has massively lost his bet on snap elections.
"He committed a political error rather than one of timing," said Lorenzo Castellani, political science lecturer at Rome's Luiss University.
Salvini bet on the advantage of surprise when on August 8, in the middle of the summer holidays, he pulled the plug on his own coalition with the Five Star Movement (M5S).
But he underestimated the ability of Italy's parliamentary system and European allies to fight back.
He didn't see that "through contacts between European capitals and Italian President Sergio Mattarella a deal was reached to prevent him cashing in on votes", Castellani told AFP.
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On the day he pulled the plug, opinion polls said his party would win 38 percent of votes in a national election, four more percentage points than were garnered in May's European parliamentary elections.
Since then, that has fallen to around 31 per cent.
One of his closest aides, Gian Carlo Giorgetti, told Thursday's Corriere della Sera daily that "Salvini's fundamental mistake was to win the European elections.
He became public enemy number one in Italy and beyond."
But Salvini understands a bit better now, and has already launched attacks on the new M5S-Democratic Party (PD) government as "formed according to the diktats of Paris, Berlin and Brussels."
Experts predict that his share of voter intentions will potentially drop below 20 per cent because, notes Castellani, "Italians are cynical and they don't like smart Alecs who turn out to be losers."
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