ROME – Five Star leader, Luigi Di Maio, hit out at an intransigent Matteo Salvini on Tuesday for failing to disentangle himself from Forza Italia’s Silvio Berlusconi as the political stalemate careers towards a return to the polls.

 “It's Salvini’s fault if we return to vote,” an irate Di Maio exclaimed on Non Stop News, after the Italian President Sergio Mattarella narrowed down the country’s next move to two remaining options.

 The Head of State proposed a ‘neutral government’ to run until December or an immediate return to the vote after no solution could be found to settling the ongoing vetoes or breaking down party loyalties.

 Heated reactions from all corners of the post-election deadlock burst out with Di Maio mocking a potential League campaign “to change this country with Berlusconi.”

“Once again Salvini chose Berlusconi, but, above all, he chose to form a government of turncoats, of traitors of the political mandate,” Di Maio said, adding that, if the League party re-runs their election campaign in coalition with Forza Italia, “we will be back to square-one.”

“The M5S are a bit wobbly, a bit here and a bit there,” the League leader, Matteo Salvini, said on Facebook in retaliation.

 However, both leaders, it seems, do agree that elections must take place at the earliest possible moment, shooting down Mattarella’s temporary, ‘neutral government’ proposal.

 They have both set 8 July as a potential date for the country to return to the polls.

 “The next vote will be a referendum - either us or them,” Salvini said, as his anti-migrant, Euroskeptic party prepare to go head-to-head with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

 Political commentators were at the centre of the criticism too, citing the total collapse of the system if the country’s political players, acting as if they held a majority, were to take over control of the rules from the referee.

 The Democratic Party’s caretaker leader, Maurizio Martina was equally unreserved in his condemnation of the current front-running parties.

 Martina denounced the “totally irresponsible and superficial” statements, many of which were “even disrespectful.”

 “The country doesn’t deserve this,” Martina said, keeping a wary eye on the period of financial instability set to kick in.

 With no incoming government to take over the reins, signals of the country’s slowing economy begin to materialise as complications to the approval of the next budget law take shape and the expected rise in VAT threatens to bubble over.

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