Frenzied Renzi

IT WAS nice while it lasted. For a few weeks after Italy fell back into yet another recession, politicians concentrated on the economy. Matteo Renzi’s government rushed through a bill on labour-market reforms. There was an expansionary 2015 budget, with cuts in public spending balanced by measures to stimulate demand.

The measures were imperfect but at least the crucial issues for a country stuck with a stagnant economy and vast debts were being debated. Italy’s biggest trade union federation, the CGIL, protested against the employment reform and Mr Renzi’s take-it-or-leave it approach.

Now the focus of public life has reverted to type. By November 12th, when Mr Renzi met Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the main conservative party, Forza Italia, to renew an increasingly vague and incomplete deal to back electoral reform, it was again fixed on political machinations. For parliament and the media, the pressing issues had become the electoral law and the next head of state.

President Giorgio Napolitano, who has used his powers to install three prime ministers (none elected), will be 90 next year. He stayed on reluctantly after last year’s inconclusive general election only because parliament could not agree on a successor. His expected departure early next year risks making the wrangling among Italy’s politicians even more Byzantine.

Until earlier this month, electoral reform seemed a done deal. In January Mr Renzi, as leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, agreed with Mr Berlusconi on measures to make Italy more governable. One was a law to guarantee a majority in the Chamber of Deputies to the biggest coalition and to exclude from parliament small parties whose leverage is one reason why Italy is so hard to run.

But Mr Renzi has now come up with a new idea. Instead of the winning alliance, it would be the leading single party that won control of the lower house. That is a potentially lethal change for Forza Italia, which has only ever won power in alliance with the Northern League. It could, however, be the key to realising the dream of some in the Renzi camp: a catch-all movement of moderate right and left that could run the country with a decisiveness traditionally lacking in Italy.

Underlying the prime minister’s change of tack is the growing weakness of Mr Berlusconi. Convicted of tax fraud, thrown out of parliament and now doing community service at an old people’s home, he can no longer keep his followers united in support of the deal he struck in January. Mr Renzi may now be safer counting only on his minority coalition partner, the small New Centre Right (NCD) party, even if that means scrapping the threshold that would exclude the NCD and other tiny parties from parliament.

Mr Renzi is ready to use parliamentary time to pass a new law soon. Quite why remains a mystery. His explanation is that new rules will produce a government able to pass necessary, if unpopular, economic reforms. But he also insists he wants his government to survive until 2018, and has written as much into a new pact with his coalition partners. Small wonder that many in Forza Italia suspect Mr Renzi’s real aim is an election next year—and that they will balk at helping him win outright control of the next parliament.