Back to the Seventies

Italians have taken umbrage at the Economist for caricaturing Britain as an outdated stereotype of Italy. The latest edition features our latest ex-prime minister as a centurion equipped with a pizza shield and a forkful of spaghetti in place of a standard. In fact, the Economist stereotype merely builds upon Truss's own literary magnum opus, in which she and some other intellectual firebuckets mentioned Italy as an awful warning against "clogged public services, low growth and low productivity." The Economist's supplementary list of Britalian vices includes "political instability," low growth again, and "subordination to the markets," none of which appears to have mollified the Italian ambassador. Oddly enough, the Mussolinian fasces, which might have appealed to an employee of the Fratelli d'Italia and would hardly be unjust to La Travatura, seem to have been omitted from the caricature.