The young pretender

Can Florence’s youthful mayor save Italy from herself?

If ever a country’s politics needed a shot in the arm, it is Italy’s. As the economy wobbles on the brink of catastrophe, we Italians are desperate for a new face from outside the discredited political caste: an Italian Obama, if you like. But who could possibly step into the breach? Some eyes are turning towards Florence’s handsome young mayor Matteo Renzi, who at 36 makes David Cameron and even George Osborne look like grizzled veterans.

To go from running the world’s most beautiful city to leading the world’s most ungovernable country would be a huge, and daunting, step. In Italy politicians are supposed to form an orderly queue and wait their turn for the top jobs. The only new faces in Italian politics in the past decade have been a few TV weathergirls, promoted by Berlusconi. Nevertheless, in these perilous and nerve-wracking times, Renzi has been rapidly ascending the greasy pole. He recently announced that he is not interested in leading his party, the left-wing Democrazia Proletaria, a disavowal which, as anyone familiar with Italian politics knows, should be taken with a pinch of powerful salt. At a birthday party for a cardinal last week, I spoke to two well-informed Jesuits — if you want to know what’s really happening in Rome, consult the Society of Jesus — and they were convinced that Renzi will run.

Who is he then? Let’s start by saying that he is far from a stereotypical European socialist; indeed he seems to have been inspired by the ideas which Tony Blair used to create New Labour. Blair returns the compliment by describing Renzi as one of the smartest young politicians he has met. Beppe Severgnini, author of the excellent book Mamma Mia: Berlusconi’s Italy Explained for Posterity and Friends Abroad, described Renzi to me more ambivalently as ‘smart and bold, but also a narcissistic Florentine who likes to impress, shock and annoy’.