Not so forza any more

AT A dinner just before Italy’s parliament took its summer recess, Silvio Berlusconi, a former prime minister, told a group of deputies from his Forza Italia party that he wanted “to die as the number one of this movement”. Lately it has started to look like Forza Italia could die before its founder. Next month Mr Berlusconi will turn 79, yet he has not named a successor. On the contrary, the leadership of his party has become ever more personalised. At the centre is Mr Berlusconi; around him is a circle of courtiers, including his 30-year-old girlfriend, a former showgirl.

Forza Italia was once the dominant party of the Italian centre-right, leading an alliance that won 47% of the vote at the 2008 general election. It now polls less than 12%. Voters have fled in droves, some because of Mr Berlusconi’s inept handling of the euro crisis, some in disgust at his private life, and others still in protest at his decision last year to make a pact with the centre-left prime minister, Matteo Renzi, on constitutional reforms. Italians see Mr Berlusconi as someone who belongs to their country’s past, not its future.