Ave et vale, Silvio Berlusconi!

From the Daily Telegraph obituary of Silvio Berlusconi 

"Though Berlusconi undoubtedly went into politics to save his financial skin, he succeeded brilliantly in capturing the public mood. His charismatic, swashbuckling personality seemed to tap into something deep in the Italian psyche.

"As one Italian journalist observed: “He has the values shared with a majority of Italian men. He likes women and likes talking about women, likes sexual jokes. He believes in the idea of the gentlemen in one place and ladies somewhere else, and the gentlemen have to be free to talk about the pleasures of life. Then he likes everything the Italians like: television, luxury, and especially the family – he has had two.”

"Voters were dazzled by his dash, and treated all the stories about his dubious business dealings with an amused tolerance bordering on admiration."

It is news to me that he went into politics to avoid prosecution. I must not have been paying attention. 

He gave Italy stable government and something like a two party system (I used to think that a pearl beyond price but am less sure now), made the right noises about immigration and Woke but deserves condemnation for backing the Anglo-Americans in Iraq. 

He wanted peace with Russia and from this point of view his death makes us all poorer. He resembled Pat Buchanan, who is a very good man to resemble. He was also a thumping crook, a serial adulterer and had bad relations with the Church.

The late Anna Lindh and the Economist loathed him and said his government was unfit to be president of the European Union, and this makes me like him for all his very grave sins.