THE MAYOR of Venice and leftist philosopher, Massimo Cacciari, has described Northern League leader, Senator Umberto Bossi, as "a man who has never read a book in his life".

The observation was made in an interview last month not as a slur but merely as graphic indication of the nature of the Bossi beast. Senator Bossi, the man who put federalism at the centre of Italian political debate, is an old fashioned grassroots politician of the not always refined variety and a man who once campaigned on a slogan of "We In The Northern League Have Got A Big Hard One". Judging by events of this week, too, he is a less than dedicated opera buff.

On Wednesday night, the bold senator opted to attend a performance of the Verdi opera, Nahucco, at the celebrated Roman Arena in Verona. Announcing his intentions, he had said the choice of opera was "not accidental" but a testimony to Verdi's Padano roots.

Senator Bossi's once federalist Northern League now calls for an independent "Padania" (the name is taken from the Padano plain in the Po valley) and his reference to Verdi's Padano roots implied a rather crude, posthumous recruitment of the great composer to the Northern League-Padania side.

Furthermore, Senator Bossi went on to say he was looking forward to hearing the Lombardy Chorus.

To the delight of political opponents, the League's leader got it wrong, on at least two counts. Firstly, the Lombardy Chorus comes from another Verdi opera, Lombardia Alla Prima Crociata. Secondly, and more importantly, Giuseppe Verdi was a profound believer in the very Italian unity which Senator Bossi now (apparently) wishes to dismantle. In 1848 and again in 1859, Verdi had incurred the wrath of the government of Parma by publicly supporting the cause of Italian unity.

Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly of all, when Senator Bossi arrived at the Arena in Verona, he was roundly booed and jeered and treated to chants of "Bossi Go Home".

Senator Bossi's League is at a turning point, a moment where bark may have to become bite and when it has to sanction its quantum leap from a late 1980s protest movement advocating federalism to a mid-90s secessionist party.

Once the Northern League vote represented a protest against the inefficiency and corruption of Rome central government. Its electorate, resentful of paying many and varied taxes to a central state which provides second-class services, wanted greater fiscal and regional autonomy. It felt vaguely resentful about being the rich north which allegedly subsidised the poor south.

But it is by no means clear that League voters then or now want secession.

For over a year now, Mr Bossi has been beating his secessionist drum, desperate to hold onto a political space for his movement in a landscape where his original demand - federalism - is no longer a divisive issue. On the contrary, all Italy's major political forces, of the left and right, are now committed to greater regional autonomy.

Many commentators ignored Mr Bossi's talk of secession during the spring general election, with some even predicting an impending electoral rout. The Northern League, however, picked up 10.1 per cent of the vote to return 27 senators and 59 deputies.

That success merely encouraged Senator Bossi to further up the stakes in a series of much publicised stunts.

First, the League installed its own "parliament" in its "capital" of Mantova, complete with its own security services all clad in green shirts.

Then on the day that the Italian Republic celebrated its 50th anniversary and even as President Scalfaro addressed a joint parliamentary sitting in Rome, Senator Bossi was "swearing in" his "government" at a colourful ceremony in front of 60,000 supporters chanting "secession" at the League's holy ground of Pontida in the foothills of the Alps.

However, there are signs that Senator Bossi has overstepped the mark, even with his own supporters. At mayoral elections in June, the League trailed third behind both the centre-left and centre-right in 10 small northern towns and in its "capital" of Mantova.

Even the minor incident at the Verona Arena this week may well represent a further fracture between Senator Bossi and former supporters. Verona, after all, is a town where the Northern League is the largest party with 27 per cent of the vote.

DESPITE the setbacks, Senator Bossi marches on in preparation for another, even bigger stunt on September 15th when he intends to declare the independent northern "state" of Padania. Not for the first time, he is treading the borderline between legality and illegality, between regional identity and racism.

Although the League's exponents claim otherwise, the movement has never been able to convince opponents that its drive to separatism is based not on a mythical ethnic identity but rather on selfish greed and anti-southerner prejudice. (Some of those who booed Senator Bossi in Verona were Arena workers of southern Italian origin who migrated north in search of work two or three decades ago.)

Many Italians are also unconvinced by "Padania", for the good reason that no such cultural, linguistic or historical entity exists or ever has existed. Padania would theoretically include regions such as Piedmont, Veneto, Liguria and Lombardy, regions with very different histories, traditions and cultural reference points.

Meanwhile, the Italian government sits and watches, hopeful that upcoming legislation introducing greater regional autonomy will defuse the Bossi issue before the Northern League's secessionist tendencies become a question of law and order.

Time is running short but Senator Bossi's track record shows that his bark is always worse than his bite. It could still be that his call for an independent Padania is a rhetorical one, a false solution to genuine problems.

A majority of Italians hope so.