To win the popular mandate that he has insisted would be the only basis on which he would assume power, Matteo Renzi will now take power unelected, reform the electoral system and the economy, and then put himself before the people for that popular mandate. Only in Italy. Small wonder Silvio Berlusconi has been quick to remind people that he is the last Italian prime minister actually elected by the Italian people. In 2008.
Mayor of Florence, and in Italian political terms at 39, a mere boy, the charismatic Renzi, has been asked by President Giorgio Napolitano to head the country's 65th government since the second World War. Notwithstanding his lack of elected political experience – he has yet even to serve in parliament – Renzi has, however, demonstrated formidable skills and a flexible ruthlessness that would have endeared him to Machiavelli.
His political execution of his predecessor as Democratic Party leader and prime minister, Enrico Letta, was carried out with a speed and finality that astonished observers and the sort of insider knowledge the "outsider" Renzi purports to disdain. And his bravura in talking and agreeing electoral reform with pariah Berlusconi has both restored a degree of respectability to the latter, convictions notwithstanding, and opened the way for reforms that should provide a new stability to the political system. A stability that may see Berlusconi restored to power – they have agreed to a system which will give the winner of 37 per cent of the vote an absolute majority in parliament – Berlusconi looks likely to be the beneficiary.
The job may however prove a poisoned chalice – he is likely to inherit the same unwieldy coalition with the small New Centre Right party of ex-Berlusconi-ites. And his administration will be expected to move fast on a range of major reforms – labour laws, an overhaul of the tax system, an emergency jobs act, an attack on the country's notorious bureaucracy . . . Letta was axed precisely because he moved too slowly, as Renzi will be acutely aware.