Berlusconi escapes unscathed again

The tragedy of the no-confidence vote in Italian Prime Minister's Silvio Berlusconi's government on Tuesday was that, whatever the result, Berlusconi couldn't lose. The vote, it's true, was on a knife-edge, at least in the lower house. Long overdue and heavily pregnant deputies were wheeled in, in the hope that the government would be voted out. But to no avail: confounding all expectations, the great escapist escaped yet again.

The senate expressed its confidence, by 162 to 135 with 11 abstentions; the chamber of deputies wasn't quite so confident (314 against 311), but Berlusconi was in the clear. Those naive commentators who had been sharpening their pencils to write Berlusconi's political obituary will have to think again. The career of one of Europe's most bizarre and sinister clowns is far from over.

And even if he had lost, it wouldn't have mattered much. Berlusconi is too shrewd to base his survival on the ever-shifting sands of Italian politics and on the country's whimsical, flip-flopping MPs.

Over the past two decades he is ensured that parliament is no longer the place where a prime minister is judged. It's not there that real debate takes place or that real decisions are made. The true theatre of Italian politics is the television studio — and Berlusconi, of course, owns most of the studios. Even if he had lost yesterday he would simply have called an election, and the chances are that — like 1994 and 2001 and 2008 — he would have won by a landslide. He owns, after all, the means of seduction.

The one certain loser, sadly, is Italy. The cost of Berlusconi's survival is complete political standstill. The date for the vote was set almost a month ago, since when parliament has been paralysed: no decisions, no leadership.

Berlusconi will now have a wafer-thin majority and, given the iffy loyalty of Italian MPs, no guarantee that any legislation will pass.

Part of the problem is that the man who brought the whole crisis to a head, Gianfranco Fini, has a tragic lack of cojones.

Having stormed out of Berlusconi's government, Fini then decided that his rebels should abstain rather than vote against it. It's a bit like a boxer picking a fight then refusing to throw a punch. If Berlusconi is famously red-blooded and full of chutzpah, Fini appears lily-livered. Three of his rebels even voted with Berlusconi. Some rebellion.

The left-wing opposition, meanwhile, is weak and divided. There's always talk of a leadership coup in the air and the party veers between principles and opportunism, between old-fashioned Euro-communism and an uninspiring, centrist confusion.

Fini's fickle followers could, in theory, form an alliance with the left-wing opposition, but it's not on the cards: an alliance between former fascists and former communists would require, even by Italian standards, extraordinary ideological flexibility.

Staying put

In the past, the way out would have been the appointment of a technical government, a coalition of politically neutral technocrats to guide the country out of the woods. But that solution hasn't been used since Berlusconi erupted on the political scene in the early 1990s, and there's no question of him, and Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Northern League, stepping aside for some humble servant of the state. They intend to stay exactly where they are.

As Berlusconi said again on Tuesday: "I'll absolutely never resign." He will never, it's clear, fall on his sword. He'll never do the honourable thing. He'll only ever do what's in his own, rather than his country's, interests.

And so Italians are saddled with a man who embarrasses them every time he steps on to the world stage; a man who is so lewd he makes Benny Hill look chaste; a man who is only not in court because he is in power.

The main reason for the riots in Rome was the acute frustration at the impossibility of removing Berlusconi from office. But the real tragedy isn't what the man has done, but what he hasn't done.

Even Berlusconi's most fervent admirers are at a loss when asked to name even half a dozen policies since 1994 of which they are truly proud. For all his landslides and years in power, he has achieved nothing.

His iconic promise in every election has been to build a bridge over the Straits of Messina linking Sicily to the mainland. He might as well have promised the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Ironically, many suspect that he only survived the no-confidence vote by promising waverers precisely that: their very own pot of gold.