A land of virtues and misdeeds

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In the 1980s, Italy surpassed Britain to become the fifth industrial power outside the Far East. Italians spoke proudly of il sorpasso — “the overtaking”. During those Thatcher years, however, Italian politics acquired a showbiz tawdriness. The porn star Cicciolina (“Sweetie Pie”) notoriously obtained a seat in the Italian parliament. Her electoral campaign on behalf of the Radical Party involved a variety of whips and steel-studded gloves, as well as a live python called Pito-Pito (which incurred the displeasure of Italian Friends of the Earth). With a porno diva in parliament it seemed that Italy had become “a brothel”, as the medieval poet Dante Alighieri said it would.

If anything, things have got worse since then. During his decade in power, Silvio Berlusconi used his television channels to spread propaganda for his party and built a “videocracy” such as the world had never seen. In Good Italy, Bad Italy, a timely account of the depredations wrought by Berlusconi and his media cohorts, Bill Emmott sees Italy as divided less by the usual north-south antagonisms than by “good” and “bad” politics. Under Berlusconi, he argues, all Italy became prey to sinister hoodlum financiers, and political power was sought for nefarious purposes alone.

Of course, “Bad Italy” is not representative of Italy as a whole. Decent Italians have a famed ability to make the best of a bad deal, and are more-over superbly gifted when it comes to crisis management. (“How’s your crisis going?” President Reagan asked an Italian politician in 1985. “Very well, thank you,” came the reply.)

Emmott is not, then, unduly pessimistic about Italy and Italians: Italy may pose a threat to the European Union, yet Italians remain a various and wonderful people, with reserves of entrepreneurial nous and creativity. The country’s salvation will lie not with a slyboots politician like Berlusconi, says Emmott, but with Italy’s legion medium-sized firms and surprisingly stable, “non-reckless” banking system. By contrast to banks in boom-bust Britain and America, Italian banks are not prone to speculative or flighty economics. Italian capitalism has rarely been about “punters” or gamblers; family-run firms and the local banks which support them thrive instead on “budgetary stringency”.

A model Italian company, in Emmott’s view, is the Piedmont-based Ferrero. From its humble origins in 1946, Ferrero now makes the world-famous chocolate brands of Kinder, Mon Cheri, Nutella and the fake-posh Ferrero Rocher. While none of these is exactly top-of-the-range, they are confectionery classics of a sort. Michele Ferrero, the firm’s 85-year-old owner, is a man far richer even than Berlusconi; his family-run multinational has 18 factories worldwide. Italy could do with more such companies, says Emmott. The Bologna-based Luxottica, one such, produces the discreetly stylish Persol sunglasses, and gives the label “Made in Italy” a good name.

For all these success stories, the legacy of “Bad Italy” is everywhere evident. Tax evasion is widespread, beaches are polluted, and museums falling down. Corruption is now so widespread in Italy, indeed, that it would be difficult to imagine a property developer applying for planning permission, or a businessman not bribing an engineer for a speedy installation. Today more than ever, Italians are weighed down by debts and doubts, as is all Europe. The crisis is not entirely of Berlusconi’s making, however. A culture of kickbacks and bribery has permeated Italian life since unification in 1861. Emmott, a former Economist editor, has written a useful guide to the virtues and misdeeds of a nation long bedevilled by corruption and bad governance.

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