Italy’s Roberto Vannacci, the insurgent ultranationalist, has yet to meet Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni or have contact with her circle, as his rise begins to reshape her right-wing alliance before next year’s election.

“I’m not formally in touch with any representative of the center-right alliance,” Vannacci told Bloomberg News Saturday at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy. “Not even informally.”

His appearance at the gathering of the country’s business elite along Lake Como marked a step into the unknown for the 57-year-old former general. Vannacci has surged in the polls since splitting from the League, a partner in Meloni’s coalition government, earlier this year. A Sept. 4 Youtrend poll shows his National Future party as the second-strongest right-wing political group after Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.

The premier, whose deputies are the League’s Matteo Salvini and Forza Italia’s Antonio Tajani, has repeatedly ruled out an alliance with Vannacci, who opposes sending aid to Ukraine and favors restricting abortion and toughening immigration.

“By formal contacts, I mean moments in which we sit down and talk about a possible future, about a possible manifesto, or a possible alliance. It’s never happened. I’ve never met the prime minister. I haven’t spoken to or seen Salvini since I left the League. Tajani, I think I bumped into him at an event but we didn’t even speak,” Vannacci said. “So no formal or informal contact.”

Meloni’s office, the League and a spokesman for Tajani all declined to comment.

To clinch another mandate, Meloni has to contend with anemic growth, stagnating living standards and Vannacci’s vertiginous rise. Complicating her position is the electoral reform she championed which, if approved in its current form, would require any coalition to win at least 42% of the vote to receive a large seat bonus in Parliament to create a large majority. In that case, it is likely she would need Vannacci’s votes.

Meloni on Friday marked a historic milestone, helming the longest-serving government in Italy’s republican history, touting those credentials in a rally in Bari to kick off the electoral campaign.

“What I would like is a center-right alliance that does right-wing politics, because the politics pursued so far have, in reality, been left-wing politics that are out of fashion. That’s the problem,” he said.

Meloni and her camp have already embraced harsher messaging on crime and migration, returning to stances held in opposition.

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