President Napolitano of Italy began crisis talks with political leaders last night in an attempt to guide the nation out of political turmoil and restore its image and morale after the departure of Romano Prodi.

Mr Prodi’s resignation, after being defeated in a vote of confidence, leaves Mr Napolitano with the choice of a general election or appointing a caretaker government to overhaul the electoral system. He is known to prefer reform, with Franco Marini, the Speaker of the Senate, favoured as frontrunner.

Mr Marini said he did not seek any high office but would leave it to “the wisdom of the President to resolve this crisis”. A former trades union leader, Mr Marini is a member of the centre-left Daisy (La Margharita) party and is admired for his handling of the Senate since becoming Speaker in 2006.

The centre Right opened champagne bottles on Thursday night, with Silvio Berlusconi, the opposition leader and media tycoon, exclaiming: “To the ballot boxes!” He predicted that the centre Right would have a majority, saying: “The country needs a government that works.” If elected he would be prime minister for the third time since entering politics in 1994.

As Mr Prodi’s defeat was announced, right-wing senators drank from champagne bottles and ate mortadella sausage to mock Mr Prodi, who comes from Bologna, where mortadella is a local speciality. “This is not a restaurant!” Mr Marini protested. One Christian Democrat senator who announced that he would back Mr Prodi fainted after he was spat on and assaulted in the chamber.

In the streets outside black-shirted members of the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazionale, part of Mr Berlusconi’s alliance, careered around in open lorries waving flags and singing the national anthem.

In the light of day, however, power lay not with the streets or the senators but with the Quirinale Palace, where President Napolitano began consultations with all party and parliamentary leaders. This is typically a drawn-out process, but the President promised to wrap up talks by next Tuesday. Mr Prodi, who had governed for 20 months with a wafer-thin majority, remains in office in the meantime.

In theory the President could ask Mr Prodi to reform his coalition. The Prime Minister has said, however, that he had no wish to stand again and that his political career was, in effect, over. “Thank goodness” said his wife, Flavia. “We haven’t had a day to ourselves since Romano went into politics in 1995.”

President Napolitano has made it clear that he is against elections under the present system of proportional representation because they would again produce an array of parties in parliament, prolonging Italy’s record of fragmented and unstable coalitions.

This would leave the third option, a caretaker administration to overhaul the electoral system, which would require broad cross-party support. He could in the end opt for a compromise non-political technocrat such as Mario Draghi, the respected governor of the Bank of Italy; Mario Monti, the former EU Commissioner; or Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, head of Fiat and the employers’ federation Confindustria.

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