2021 Five Star Movement leadership election

In February 2021, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was forced to resign, after losing the absolute majority in the Senate of the Republic.[5][6] On 28 February 2021, after a few days from the end of his premiership, Conte joined the Five Star Movement (M5S), the party which proposed his candidacy as Prime Minister in June 2018.[7][8]

After a few days, the founder and so-called Guarantor of the M5S, Beppe Grillo, gave Conte the task of writing a new party's statute and announced that Conte would become the new political leader.[9] In the following months, however, tensions grown up between the two politicians. In June, Grillo accused Conte of aiming at creating a one-man party and of being "without a political vision".[10] The former Prime Minister threatened to found his own political movement, stating that Grillo "can not stop this useful political project".[11] In July 2021, Conte and Grillo found a compromise on the new statute and leadership elections were called on 6 August.[12]