Grand political comedy in Rome and the Vatican | 2 May 2013

I’m just back from a week in Italy where a grand political comedy playing in Rome has at least been some compensation for the poor weather and the general economic gloom. Giorgio Napolitano, the 87-year-old former communist who had been looking forward to retiring after his seven-year stint as President of the Republic, was not only denied a farewell visit from the Queen of England because of her tummy bug, but was denied retirement as well. With the parliament, which elects the president, unable to agree on a successor, its members insisted that he continue in office for an unprecedented second term which, if he sees it out, will make him 94 when he is finally allowed to step down.

At his second swearing-in ceremony in parliament, Napolitano made plain his anger and contempt for the politicians who had spent the two months since an inconclusive general election squabbling among themselves instead of forming the government that Italy desperately needed if it was to avoid catastrophe.