Italy’s new prime minister has had a good first nine months

FOR THE past six months Italians have been floating from triumph to triumph. It began in May when an Italian band, Maneskin, won the Eurovision song contest. In July their men’s football team became Europe’s champions and in August, at the Olympics, their male sprinters astonished the sporting world, claiming gold in the 100 metres and 4 x 100 metres relay. In October an Italian scientist, Giorgio Parisi, shared the Nobel prize for physics.

Italy has meanwhile had what is, for it, the novel experience of being governed by an internationally respected prime minister, Mario Draghi, with a huge parliamentary majority that allows him to turn his projects swiftly into law. Supported by an effective vaccination campaign, the economy is recovering strongly. On October 28th Mr Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank, forecast economic growth this year of “probably well over 6%”, though few expect Italy’s GDP to regain its pre-pandemic level until 2022, well behind America and Britain, among others. But Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, has revised its outlook for Italian debt from stable to positive, and Italians can look forward to a period in which their government will be in a position—under an obligation, indeed—to spend liberally for the first time since the days of the post-war, American-funded Marshall Plan.