IMAGINE an Italian café, circa 2023. Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD) has been re-elected to a third term. A customer reads of frantic talks in Britain, where yet another government has collapsed after a few weeks because of the defection of Welsh Nationalists. “Questi inglesi!” he mutters. “What a way to run a country!”
Unthinkable? With hindsight, this week might mark the moment Britons and Italians swapped political identities. On May 4th, as Britons braced for a confused election result and a coalition or minority government, the Italian parliament approved a reform that should give Italy long-term political stability and decisive two-party (or even one-party) government.
The new rules will give a party that wins 40% of the vote bonus seats to create a majority of 340 in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies, the lower house. If no group hits the target, a run-off will be held between the two biggest parties to decide which gets the absolute majority. That seems similar to today’s arrangement (though it is the winning coalition, not a single party, that is guaranteed control). But the new law, which applies only to the lower house, is one of a series of reforms planned by Mr Renzi that include the neutering of the upper-house Senate. The electoral change will take effect only in July 2016, the deadline for turning the Senate…