Anti-Americanism is a luxury which Italy cannot afford in its struggles to become a normal European country. At least, not until its economic performance is a little closer to that of the US.

The pity is that Romano Prodi’s nine-month-old government fell just as it was getting somewhere in hauling Italy’s creaking economy into the 21st century. Given Prodi’s tentative and unsatisfying tenure as President of the European Commission, it has been startling to see him back home — and after such a narrow election victory — reborn as “Super Prodi”.

Astonishing though the sight has been, he managed to lead his unwieldy coalition through the first stages of long-overdue reforms. You can now get a haircut in Italy on a Monday even if the country’s vast pension problems remain untouched.

There does appear to have been a genuine element of accident in the fall of the government — more, say, than in the end of many of Italy’s other 60 governments since the Second World War. The far Left of Prodi’s centre-left coalition, intending only to protest at his commitment to keeping troops in Afghanistan and to the US base at Vicenza, seemed appalled at having brought down the government, while centre-left newspapers called the senators “traitors”.

“Maybe if I knew my vote was so fundamental I would have reflected a bit”, said Fernando Rossi, a 60-year-old Communist, like a toddler weeping at his own destruction of his tower of building blocks. “We’re a country of madmen”, said Massimo D’Alema, the Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister, who can be relied on for succinct condemnation of Italy’s struggles to behave like a modern state.

It was perverse of the far Left to take such a swipe at pro-US policies just as the controversy was fading from them. Silvio Berlusconi, Prodi’s predecessor, head of a centre-right government, defied public opinion when he backed the US in sending troops to Iraq. Prodi, in defending the Italian military contribution in Afghanistan, was on much firmer ground. He was from the other side of the political spectrum, which immediately neutralised some of the partisan acid, and he could argue that Italy was one of many countries supporting the action. It was a bold move, but not a reckless one, to give Italy a place in Europe’s foreign policy.

Was the clash over the US merely a proxy for other deep conflicts about economic policy? If only it were. That might at least be a healthy sign that they were being addressed. Berlusconi did, at the end of his premiership, managed to pass some reforms which may have contributed a bit to the slight uptick in last year’s growth. Prodi’s reforms mark real progress too.

But these steps are tiny and Italy’s problems are huge. Employment levels are a bit higher but nothing has been done to persuade students to get a job and not to pass the whole of their twenties in universities, nor to dissuade high numbers from dropping out. Productivity is barely rising; national income per head is falling further behind other leading countries.

Those issues are worth a political fight. But although this week’s turmoil reflects the strains in a messy coalition, it was a self-indulgent swipe at the Iraq invasion, a political battle which is now well past.

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