09 November, 2011

A change for Italy?

Silvio Berlusconi has announced that he will resign when his austerity budget - the letter to the IMF with its promises of spending cuts and economic competitiveness - is passed into law.

Berlusconi has seemed like a fixture in office: Prime Minister for eight years out of the last ten and the only post war politician to hold the post for a full term. It is a measure of the man's tenacity that the first thing one thought on hearing the news was that it must be some sort of trick. Indeed, it does leave his opponents wit the problem of passing the measures, failing which, presumably, he would remain in power. And a promise might turn out to be a more flexible instrument than it sounds.

We shall see, but as I pointed out on the BBC yesterday, it doesn't really solve much: Italy still has exactly the same problems it had the day before, merely a political vacuum.

Oh, and by the way, he hasn't actually gone yet.

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