Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

... of the long march for Italy's Communists. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, they're not represented in the country's parliament. In fact, they didn't win a single seat in either chamber. Will the comrades now have to, like, work for a living? The Greens are out, too. No Communists, no Socialists, no Greens. The people have spoken. Maybe Italy is on the way to a two-party political system. Hats off, by the way, to Walter Veltroni, who helped create a centre-left party that refused to truck with the irredentist old Left. With Berlusconi in the Palazzo Chigi and Sarkozy in the Palais de l'Élysée, things are looking up. And Silvio and Sarko are much better for the punditry business than the alternatives would have been. All we need now is for Boris Johnson to take up residence on the south bank of the Thames.