Italy ponders its future

We have had a day or two to digest the Italian Election results and no one seems to be much the wiser. As always in Italy there is a (quite unnecessary) complexity to who is up and who is down and whether that is a temporary or medium-term change. As well as not understanding it, there are increasing signs that the electorate doesn’t much care any more.

At first sight it would seem that no one did well. At least Berlusconi’s PdL, which lost Milan and Naples, his allies the Lega Nord, who lost Novara, didn’t do well, and it wasn’t really a great night for Bersani’s socialists.

The big gains were for the Ecology and Freedom Party (Milan) and the Italy of Values Party (Naples). But the PdL coalition’s gravest loss may well be seen to be the Lega Nord’s loss of Novara. There has already been grumbling in Bossi’s party that it must damage them being so closely linked to Berlusconi. It was Bossi who brought down Berlusconi’s first government.

So is Silvio on his way out? He has said that he does not intend to hold office after the next elections in 2013, so it might be safer for the other parties to let the parliament run its course. But Silvio has changed his mind before. Against that the Democratic Party have no strong following and would be reluctant to be plunged into elections. Might Bossi think he has held on too long, but that it would be better not to precipitate elections at a time of dwindling popularity?

Certainly if Bossi were to pull out of the coalition there would have to be early elections, or President Napolitano might appoint a specialist administration of technocrats.

Perhaps after all this is just the mid-term blues – regional elections where people felt they could rap the ruling party on the knuckles.

It is hard for us to read the signs and just as hard for the Italians to read them. An external shock, such as Greece defaulting, could change everything overnight. For the meantime, Italy does not seem to be going left, it doesn’t seem to be going right, but it is fed up with what it has got.