The League, commonly known as Lega Nord, is a right-wing populist political party in Italy, founded on 4 December 1989 by Umberto Bossi as an electoral alliance of the Lega Lombarda, Liga Veneta, Uniun Ligure, Lega Emiliano-Romagnola, Piemont Autonomista, and Alleanza Toscana, a group of northern Italian regionalist parties. The original program of the party identified federalist libertarianism as its ideology, and it initially supported the secession of northern Italy to form the country of Padania; the party saw Rome as corrupt, and believed that poor Southern Italy was receiving the most attention from the government.
The party often varied its tone and policies, replacing its original libertarianism and social liberalism with social conservatism, its anti-clericalism with a pro-Catholic Church stance, and its pro-Europeanism with a marked Euroscepticism. It abandoned much of its original pacifism and uncompromising environmentalism as well, becoming a right-wing populist party during the 21st century. The party's political culture included a mix of northern Italian pride and Celtic-influenced Padanian nationalism, resentment of southern Italian habits and Roman authorities, distrust of the Italian government and its flag, and some support for the free market, anti-statism, anti-globalism, and even separatism or secessionism. The party also held anti-monopolism and anti-centralist views. Lega stereotyped southern Italian internal migrants to northern Italian cities as welfare abusers, criminals, and detrimental to northern society, and they often called southern Italians terroni (a slur meaning "peasants").
The party had a catch-all nature, as its main focus was on cultural identity and not on political views, classes, or occupations. In 1992, 25.4% of Lega Nord voters were formerly supporters of Christian Democracy, 18.5% of the Italian Communist Party, 12.5% of the Italian Socialist Party, and 6.6% of the Italian Social Movement; 28.7% of Lega voters identified as centrist, 26.3% as right-wingers, and 22.1% as left-wingers. The party supported liberal ideas such as deregulation and social democratic ideas such as the defense of workers' wages and pensions, and the party included both liberal-conservative and social democratic factions in addition to its increasingly right-wing populist majority. The former communist Matteo Salvini lurched the party to the right, embracing Italian nationalism (as opposed to regional nationalism), emphasizing Euroscepticism, opposing immigration, and aligning Lega with other right-wing populist parties in Western and Central Europe. Bossi and the Padanist old guard opposed Salvini's reforms within the party, but the party reached its highest popularity under Salvini, becoming the third-largest party in the country in 2018, behind the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party of Italy. The party formed an alliance with the M5S party due to their shared anti-immigration views.
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