IT WAS Italian politics at its most extravagantly theatrical. Inside the senate on November 27th, as it prepared to vote on Silvio Berlusconi’s expulsion, some of his party’s female lawmakers appeared dressed in widow’s black. Outside, the former prime minister told a noisy (but notably small) rally of his supporters that it was a “day of mourning for democracy”.Ignoring the histrionics, a majority in the upper house defeated a string of motions intended to block Mr Berlusconi’s removal following his conviction in August for tax fraud. As a result, the longest-serving prime minister since the second world war, a man who has dominated the public life of his nation for more than 20 years, no longer has parliamentary immunity.One of Mr Berlusconi’s many lawyers, Franco Coppi, said the idea his client might go to jail was “unreal”. Unlikely, perhaps. But no longer impossible.The day before the vote, Mr Berlusconi’s party—newly relaunched under its old name of Forza Italia (Come on Italy)—abandoned Enrico Letta’s coalition government and voted against the 2014 budget. But they could not stop it: a number of Berlusconi defectors, regrouped in a new centre-right party under the leadership of Angelino Alfano, continues to support the Letta government.Mr Berlusconi huffed and puffed to avoid expulsion. He urged the president to grant him a pardon; beseeched the senators of the left…