Europe's most controversial and unscrupulous, and by foreigners most underestimated, politician has surpassed himself. Not only has Silvio Berlusconi won the Italian premiership for a third time, and with a convincing majority in both houses of the Italian parliament that he alone confidently predicted; he has emerged the winner in a contest that, to wide surprise, has produced a political earthquake.

In anger and frustration, voters have swept away the Italy of dozens of parties and factions. Only six of the 26 parties in the outgoing parliament have secured seats - and not one of these went to Italy's several brands of communist, consigned to oblivion along with their allies, the Greens. It was the “complete defeat of unforetold proportions” that Fausto Bertinotti, Italy's veteran red emperor, conceded yesterday as he announced his retirement from politics.

This radical simplification of the political arithmetic marks the end of the hesitant and muddled transition that began 15 years ago, when Italy's First Republic collapsed in a welter of corruption scandals, destroying the Christian Democrat and Socialist parties. That was when Italy's richest tycoon first erupted on the political scene, vowing to turn his populist Forza Italia! movement into the dominant party of the Right, and thus to force an end to the politics of complex coalitions easily blackmailed by minute factions whose threatened mutinies paralysed decision-making.

Despite rather than because of its politicians, Italy at last has a reasonably coherent bipolar framework, a strong centre-right government that is balanced, for the first time ever, by a single and avowedly modernising centre-left Democratic Party, led by Walter Veltroni. Mr Berlusconi has what he said he always wanted. He also has no excuse, no alibi whatever - other than the daunting complexity of Italy's accumulated problems - for failing this time to deliver stable, solid and active government.

Has he got what it takes to govern, as distinct from getting in the vote? The jury is very much out. His first victory, in 1994, owed as much to national disillusion with all politicians as to his extravagant promises to use his business skills to enrich everyone, and he was duly punished two years later for failing to impose discipline on his own coalition partners - notably the quasi-separatist Northern League, which has again emerged as a powerful force.

His second chance, in 2001, came courtesy of the chaotic performance of Italy's bickering left-wing parties, and by common consent he blew it, doing culpably little with a record full five-year term in power and, worse, devoting time to legislation calculated to ease his own little difficulties with the law.

So the voters wearily turned back, two years ago, to Romano Prodi and his motley crew of centrists, socialists, greens and reds, but this time with a hair-thin majority that put it strictly on probation.

Mr Berlusconi did something about his own thinning hair and waited for the inevitably swift demise of Italy's latest apology for a government. He then carried the day with a skilful fusion of vintage Berlusconi, the people's champion against an overmighty, underperforming State, and the “new”, relatively sober-sided Berlusconi, who insists he has learnt from his past mistakes. He no longer promises miracles, only unremitting effort, and, dropping his stand-up-comic vilification of everything left-wing, declares himself willing to work “in the national interest” with Mr Veltroni's Democratic Party.

Mr Berlusconi has said the going will be hard. His greatest asset is that Italians, even those traditionally resistant to change, are at their wit's end. Their votes, and the high turnout of 80 per cent, were driven by a sense that the country has touched rock bottom and that, so deeply are Italy's finances in the red, there is no money to buy the country's way out of trouble.

The economy is flat on the floor, decent job prospects are few, particularly for the young, and the highest inflation for 22 years combines with static wages and the Prodi Government's tax rises that eat deep into families' purchasing power. They have responded by giving the politicians the tools to do things they will resent, but accept are now unavoidable. Things like cutting public spending while improving its quality - even if this means seriously confronting powerful public sector unions and risking endless strikes. Things like curbing the political patronage on which literally hundreds of thousands of Italians depend for jobs - a reform abruptly made feasible with the defenestration of mini-parties from parliament.

Mr Berlusconi's handicap is that, although his new Party of Freedoms benefited by it, this has once again been a strongly “anti-political” vote, one that reflects grassroots anger at the profligate, self-seeking political habits summed up in the word “Rome”. It will not make governing any easier. Two “anti-political” parties have been the big winners from this phenomenon: the Northern League, which despite the eccentricities of its leader, Umberto Bossi, draws strongly on the impatience of the modern, industrial and still extremely wealthy Italy north of the Apennines with ineffectual and slow-moving central government; and, on the Left, the Italy of Values party led by Antonio Di Pietro, the former magistrate who made his name 15 years ago as leader of the Clean Hands investigation of the corrupt links between business and politicians.

Neither of these firebrands is going to be keen on accommodation with the opposite side. The League owes Mr Berlusconi few favours - and is demanding the retention of a higher share of the taxes generated in the north as the price of its support. The “northern question”, potentially explosive, is back on the agenda. As for Mr Di Pietro, he nurtures a personal detestation of Mr Berlusconi - who returns the favour - that could lead to him storming out of alliance with a “too co-operative” Mr Veltroni, who, to his credit, has been swift to extend a hand to Mr Berlusconi.

Responsible opposition is as much of a novelty for Italy as are two-party politics. As novel, indeed, as the spectacle of Silvio Berlusconi, poacher turned gamekeeper, seeking to set his stamp on history as the statesman who gives Italy modern, clean, sober and responsible government.

Rosemary Righter is a Times columnist who lives in Umbria

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