Lady Gaga's latest hit says “you're giving me a million reasons to let you go … But baby, I just need one good one to stay”. Renzi you should have sung it to D'Alema, somehow the conductor behind the umpteenth split that in all likelihood will take place in the PD.
The good reason to stay, in my opinion, is to avoid public debt instability which unfortunately threatens Italy in the event of political instability.
The international scenario (eg Brexit, Trump, Russian aggressiveness) pushes the EU either towards disintegration or towards unification, even political. Merkel's opening to the two-speed EU goes in the second perspective. But in order to be admitted to the political union (which also involves some unification of national public budgets) Italy will have to give guarantees that at the moment it cannot give and that it could only give with government stability and a credible commitment to the return of the public debt.
So what will the split do about it? It is quite obvious that it will reduce government stability. Therefore Renzi and D'Alema, each for his part, are about to assume responsibility for a choice that harms the interests of the country. Incidentally, in fact, it is legitimate to doubt whether the centre-right in Italy would take charge of the stabilization of the public debt (which has already shown little sensitivity in this regard with the Berlusconi governments and sees the populist component even stronger than in the past) or the Five Star movement (which at the moment seems to lack intentions and skills in this sense).
But if we want to compare D'Alema and Renzi in terms of public debt performance under their governments, what emerges? A precise comparison is difficult because the D'Alema government in the strict sense lasted just over a year and even Renzi's lasted less than three years. In any case, under the D'Alema government the public debt was reduced from 110 to about 107% of GDP. Under the Renzi government, on the other hand, the ratio first continued to grow and then stabilized at close to 133%. It is not legitimate to conclude that D'Alema was more attentive than Renzi to public debt because the denominator (nominal GDP) grew by at least 3% under D'Alema while it contracted or grew by less than 1% under Renzi.
What's more, the only phase in which the debt/GDP ratio has been reduced in Italy in the last 20 years is the Prodi I government, which reduced it from around 115 to 110% for the duration in the strict sense of that government but moreover, which laid the foundations for the subsequent reduction (e.g. privatizations) until it reached 100% in 2003. And, then, one cannot fail to remember that D'Alema was (if not the orchestrator) the one who led the choice not to go to the polls immediately after the fall of Prodi I, in which case Prodi would in all probability have been re-elected with a much stronger majority and, just as probably, the debt stabilization would have continued with greater vigor, thus avoiding exposed to the crisis shock since 2008.
In short, neither Renzi nor D'Alema have a good track record in terms of ability to stabilize the debt. It is perhaps no coincidence that they now find themselves co-responsible for a political choice that could cost Italy a lot.
