Dissection post-election gives Berlusconi the blues

Gordon Brown's Labour party sank at the polls in a storm of scandals and infighting, but Silvio Berlusconi has emerged from his own very public personal troubles far ahead of Italy's centre-left opposition and among the most popular of Europe's 27 heads of government. Compounding their failure to present a credible alternative, Italy's opposition Democrats also suffered crushing defeats in local polls last weekend. And yet, as even his supporters concede, Mr Berlusconi is not happy. Having won three general elections and governed for seven of the past 15 years while enlarging his media-based fortune, Mr Berlusconi, a 72-year-old billionaire and grandfather, should be looking at four more years as prime minister with a large majority - and then comfortable retirement. Instead he is reported to be agonising over why his newly formed centre-right People of Liberty party - a merger of his old Forza Italia with the post-fascist National Alliance - polled 2.8m votes fewer and lost two percentage points compared with last year's general elections. Superficially it might seem votes were lost in the storm over his friendship with an 18-year-old would-be model (in spite of repeated denials of intimacy). In his post-electoral dissection, Mr Berlusconi, owner of loss-making AC Milan football club, also recognised - sympathisers were quoted as saying - that the forced sale to Real Madrid of Kaka, his Brazilian playmaker, cost him at the ballot box. More fundamentally, it would seem that the root of his faltering at the polls - while still attracting the support of more than one in three Italians - runs deeper than his pockets and patronage can provide. His legacy and battle for succession are at stake. More than that, when Mr Berlusconi finally leaves the political scene - and it is widely believed he covets the position of head of state - he will lose the immunity from prosecution given him by a compliant parliament, leaving him vulnerable to "persecution" by the courts.

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