Diary – 13 September 2003

Last week The Spectator interviewed Silvio Berlusconi, and there followed a political furore that dominated the Italian news for – well, at least a couple of days. The cause of the crisis was the opinion of Italy’s 57th Italian post-war prime minister on the subject of judges. This is a field in which he is expert, as a result of 500 raids in the past decade by the Guardie di Finanza on the various tendrils of his media empire. Il Cavaliere – as he is nicknamed – told us that Italian judges are ‘antropologicamente diversi’ from the rest of us for two reasons: (1) they are left-wing; and (2) they are mad anyway. All hell broke loose. Even I became newsworthy. One of Berlusconi’s supporters went so far as to claim that Boris Johnson and I were drunk when we conducted the interview, an allegation with no foundation whatever.

On the whole, I think Berlusconi – a Latino Thatcherite – a very good thing for Italy.