In any other G8 country a prime minister embroiled in allegations about the procurement of call girls and suspected of spending the night with one of them would resign or be forced out.

In Italy, supporters of Silvio Berlusconi predict that he will survive run-off elections in 22 provinces and 98 municipal councils where the result was too close to call two weeks ago.

Many European leaders “wonder how Berlusconi can still be Prime Minister, even if they do not say so to his face”, according to Graham Watson, Liberal Democrat leader in the European Paliament. Part of the answer is that most Italians get their news from television — and both Mr Berlusconi’s channels and RAI, the public network, which he controls, have buried the scandals.

Il Giornale, his own newspaper, has been deployed to discredit any witness against him, portraying the Prime Minister as the victim of a plot involving not only the Left but the international press, Italy’s own secret services and “traitors in his entourage”.

For Vittorio Sgarbi, a former centre-Right deputy Culture Minister, it is even simpler: men of power need a lot of sex. “If Berlusconi does not gain sexual satisfaction he governs badly.”

Not all Italian women are amused, especially in the light of a remark by Mr Berlusconi’s lawyer that, if he had spent the night with a call girl, he was only the “end user”.

The Vatican has not commented officially, but Monsignor Carlo Ghidelli, Archbishop of Lanciano and Ortona, in Abruzzo — where Mr Berlusconi is due to preside at next month’s G8 summit — said that the scandal could not be seen as a “private matter”.

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