Umberto Bossi

Bossi was born on 19 September 1941 in Cassano Magnago, in the province of Varese, in the Italian region of Lombardy. He graduated from scientific high school (liceo scientifico) and later began studying medicine at the University of Pavia, although he did not get a degree. In 1975, he was a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) for a brief period. In February 1979, he met Bruno Salvadori, leader of the Valdostan Union.

After the death of Salvadori in a car accident during the summer of 1980, Bossi began focusing more on Lombardy. After two years, the autonomist Lega Lombarda (Lombard League) was born. In that period, Bossi met his second wife, Manuela Marrone. The Lombard League later sought alliances with similar movements in Veneto and Piedmont, forming Lega Nord (Northern League), of which he was the federal secretary until 5 April 2012. He became the undisputed and unchallenged leader of the party, a position that he maintained even after a serious stroke. Until his death in 2026, he was the League's federal president, an honorary title devoid of real power, and had been trying to regain the leadership of the movement he founded.

When the scandals of Tangentopoli were unveiled from 1992 on, Bossi rode the wave, presenting himself as the new man in politics, and set out to sweep away corruption and incompetence. Bossi himself received an eight-month suspended prison sentence, along with Northern League's treasurer at the time of the events, Alessandro Patelli, for receiving a 200-million-lire bribe in a trial that also convicted many of the politicians he routinely attacked, such as Bettino Craxi, Arnaldo Forlani, and others. Bossi's sentence was upheld on appeal.

In 1998, Bossi received a one-year suspended prison sentence for incitement of violence after he uttered the following sentence at a Northern League meeting: "We must hunt down these rascals [neo-fascists], and if they take votes from us, then let's comb the area house by house, because we kicked the fascists out of here once before after the war." While being Minister for Institutional Reforms and Devolution in 2003, Bossi ordered the Italian Navy to fire live rounds on boats holding illegal immigrants, stating: "After the second or third warning, bang... we fire the cannon." Bossi was critical of the European Union, and once described it as a "nest of communist bankers".