Umberto Bossi, Northern League Founder, Dies at 84

Umberto Bossi, the founder of Italy's Northern League party and a pivotal figure in the nation's shift toward populist and regionalist politics, died Thursday at a hospital in Varese, in northern Italy. He was 84 years old, and the cause of death was not immediately disclosed, according to family and party officials.

Bossi, known for his gravelly voice and unfiltered rhetoric, built a political movement that channeled frustrations among northern Italians over central government inefficiency and corruption. Born on September 19, 1941, in Cassano Magnago, a working-class town near Milan, he began his career with brief ties to leftist groups before embracing federalist and separatist views. In the 1980s, he established the Lega Lombarda, which evolved into the Northern League in 1989. The party advocated greater autonomy for the prosperous north, sometimes calling for outright secession and dubbing the imagined territory Padania, a region spanning from Turin to Venice.

His signature slogan, "Roma ladrona" or "Thieving Rome," captured the resentment of northern taxpayers who felt overburdened by southern subsidies and bureaucratic waste. The Northern League gained traction amid...