Can they fix Italy?
Berlusconi might have other ideas
Prospect Blog
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Youssou N’Dour: singer-statesman
The news that Youssou N’Dour, perhaps Africa’s most famous musician, is running for president of Senegal is not entirely unexpected—he had announced plans to “enter the political arena” last November. Canny observers might have spotted the telltale signs in a 2007 Guardian interview, when N’Dour claimed that “I don’t want... -
Europe’s boring leader problem
Europe is suffering its worst crisis since the second world war, says Jean-Claude Trichet, the outgoing head of the European Central Bank. Yet instead of De Gaulle and Churchill, today’s continent is led by an altogether blander bunch. Angela Merkel, the most important politician in Europe, is a byword for... -
Forza Napolitano!
In his latest book, Forza, Italia!, Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, draws a line between what he defines as the ‘bad’ and the ‘good’ Italy. The bad Italy, he claims, is dragging the country down, preventing it from liberating the energy which the good Italy has been injecting... -
After Berlusconi, what’s Left?
There are plenty of good reasons to believe that the cities of Milan and Crewe have never been compared in any sort of way. There is objectively little that one of the world capitals of football and fashion and a small railway town in Cheshire have in common. Yet the... -
Is Libya the birthplace of bunga bunga?
I am a shallow man. Sitting here in Tripoli, in the midst of a civil war, I should be contemplating the morality of liberal interventionism, or the legitimacy of autocratic government in a tribal society, or the efficacy of air power to effect regime change. I occasionally ponder these big... -
Europe: on the wrong side of history?
Scared of instability and waves of immigration, European governments have wrongly privileged their own national interests over democracy in the Middle East -
World: The month ahead
Elections in Kazakhstan and Nigeria, controversy in Italy and France, and a fake foreign devil in Beijing -
Berlusconi, Gaddafi and the failure of freewheeling diplomacy
I can still remember vividly the sense of unease I had as I walked past the traffic jams clogging Rome’s roads on a hot day last August. The city had been blocked for the visit of Italy’s new friend, Muammar Gaddafi. As part of the warm welcome he received, Gadaffi... -
The Italian job
The Berlusconi soap opera is distracting the country from a much more serious problem
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