METTERNICH famously claimed that Italy was “little more than a geographical expression” but the princely statesman’s quip has found a perhaps unlikely supporter in the wife of Silvio Berlusconi. In an interview with La Stampa Veronica Lario, the 71-year-old millionaire’s 51-year-old wife, said that “Italy has never been well-suited to being a single country, and has never matured enough to become one. There is no longer any value in a unified Italy”.
The remark comes as the northern regionalist Lega Nord had its greatest electoral success in a decade. The Lega Nord is in coalition with Mr. Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, and it is expected that the Deputy Prime Minister will be named from the northern party founded by Umberto Bossi which draws most of its support from the working classes.
“This is a disillusioned country, even after Berlusconi’s victory,” Ms. Lario said in the interview, adding that it was time for the elites to stop being “snobbish” about the Lega Nord. “The League expresses concrete demands from the most productive part of Italy, which is tired of dragging the rest of the country and does not find itself represented by the Left-wing.”