losses and factory closures, attacked Renzi – whom he refers to as the “little moron” – promised clean politics, universal unemployment benefits, and a referendum on eurozone membership to give back to Italians their “monetary, economic and cultural sovereignty”.

He also rapped about a looming technological revolution – one of his signature themes – based on renewable energy and 3D printers.

Renzi, whose rally on the previous day failed to fill up a smaller square, closed his campaign in his native Florence, before 20,000 people, according to PD estimates.

The going has proven tougher than expected for the ambitious PD leader, who was installed three months ago as Europe’s youngest prime minister, pledging unprecedented economic and political change. He has delivered an 80-euro-a-month tax cut for low-paid workers, but has seenfrom parliament and a six-year-ban on running for office, and saw him start a one-year community service in a centre for Alzheimer’s patients on May 9.

At the end of a campaign where he outraged Germans by accusing them of being in denial about Nazi concentration camps, compared Grillo to an “aspiring dictator” akin to Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot, and even promised free dentures to pensioners, the 77-year-old insisted he was down, but not out.

“I will make it, because even if they call me crazy, there are loads of people who are crazy like me,” he said.

Parties have to win at least 4 percent of the votes to win a share of the 73 seats allocated to Italy in the European Parliament.

The anti-euro and anti-immigrant Northern League and