A duel gone wrong
Silvio Berlusconi badly miscalculated with his threat to bring down the government of Enrico Letta
IT WAS the kind of spectacle that makes other Europeans despair of Italy’s dizzyingly volatile politics. On October 2nd Enrico Letta’s left-right coalition faced a parliamentary confidence vote that could have sunk it, pitching a country still immersed in its longest post-war recession into a snap election and possibly putting at risk next year’s budget. The prime minister told the upper house Senate, where his majority is shakiest, that defeat would carry a “fatal risk” of derailing Italy’s hoped-for recovery.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “A duel gone wrong”
From the October 5th 2013 edition
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Emmanuel Macron shows off the gloriously restored Notre Dame
Five years after it was gutted by fire, the cathedral is more beautiful than ever
Ursula von der Leyen has a new doctrine for handling the hard right
The boss of the European Commission embarks on a second term
Marine Le Pen spooks the bond markets
She threatens to bring down the French government, but also faces a possible ban from politics
The maths of Europe’s military black hole
It needs to spend to defend, but voters may balk
Ukraine’s warriors brace for a Kremlin surge in the south
Vladimir Putin’s war machine is pushing harder and crushing Ukrainian morale
Vladimir Putin fires a new missile to amplify his nuclear threats
The attack on Ukraine is part of a new era of missile warfare