When Caroline Flint resigned as Europe minister, she complained that Gordon Brown used women as “window dressing”. Might she perhaps feel happier in the Italian government? Nobody could accuse Silvio Berlusconi of disliking women. The Italian prime minister’s wife wants a divorce because he spends too much time with attractive young models; a Spanish newspaper last week published pictures of topless women and a naked man at Berlusconi’s villa in Sardinia. It makes a round of croquet at Dorneywood look very tame.
Comparisons between the two men must seem unfair. Take pride in an image of Presbyterian probity and you are ridiculed. Behave like an 18th-century rake and your ratings soar. Brown is supposed to be a keen student of political history, but it’s Berlusconi who has learnt its lessons. According to legend, Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century Tory prime minister, was distraught after Viscount Palmerston, his Liberal opponent, was accused of adultery when he was 78. “If this gets out,” said Dizzy, “the old man will win by a landslide.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6446704.ece
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