Background During a national assembly of
Democracy and Autonomy (DemA) in January 2022,
Luigi de Magistris, party leader and former
Mayor of Naples, announced his intention to create a new coalition of left-wing parties, starting from his own party. In February, four deputies founded a sub-group at the Chamber of Deputies called "ManifestA". All of them had been elected in the
2018 general election for the
Five Star Movement, a big-tent populist party, and then left the party and joined either
Power to the People (PaP) or
Communist Refoundation Party (PRC). In April, at the Chamber of Deputies, de Magistris and the four deputies of ManifestA, held a joint conference to launch a coalition of parties opposed to the
Russo-Ukrainian war and
Mario Draghi's
government for the next general election, initially scheduled to be held in 2023. He also stated that the group would not join the
centre-left coalition led by the
Democratic Party. In July, De Magistris organised an assembly named "Towards the People's Union", which was attended also by PaP, the PRC, ManifestA and other groups. The alliance participated in the
2022 general election, receiving over 400,000 votes and zero seats. In December, the 4th October Movement, a brekaway-party from the
Five Star Movement, announced they will join the UP, along with their two regional councillors in Piedmont. In the run-up of the
2024 European Parliament election some of the components of UP joined
Peace Land Dignity, a pacifist electoral list proposed by journalist
Michele Santoro, while others chose to support some individual candidacies in the
Green and Left Alliance lists. In March 2024 de Magistris, after refusing to stand as a candidate in the upcoming election, left UP's leadership altogether. ==Composition==