No big surprise. This election is above all a vote about how to cure Italy’s shocking economic problems. Italians elected Berlusconi as Prime Minister (for the second time) five years ago to do just that; he has failed on every important measure.

But Prodi is not the answer. If Italians can find no better alternative, then they are simply juggling between different scripts for self-destruction.

The puzzle is that so many parts of Italy remain so beautiful, so affluent, by world standards, and so stable, while its economic predicament gets worse. Critics would say that this is the problem: a love for the past, and a pleasure in the old way of life, which makes it hard to change, or to let its young people get jobs, leave home and challenge the Establishment.

The South’s eight regions (and a third of the population) would add that it does not share the wealth of the North, despite decades of subsidies, and that nearly half of those under 35 are unemployed.

It is less than 20 years since the sorpasso, when Italy triumphantly announced that its gross domestic product had overtaken that of Britain. But that is so far in the past it is invisible. Last month, Italy’s economy failed to grow — an even worse performance than the eurozone’s sluggish 1.3 per cent. For 14 of the past 15 years, it has grown more slowly than the eurozone average.

Public debt is more than 100 per cent of GDP, the third worst among industrialised countries, and Italy spends more than 4.5 per cent of GDP on paying the interest.

Its share of world trade is dropping fast, to 2.7 per cent in 2005, down from 4.3 per cent a decade before. Those beautiful handbags and shoes, made by small family firms across the North, are being swept away in a tide of imports from China and other Asian countries.

One government official said recently that the only strategy to counter the Chinese threat was “to make nicer handbags”.

Meanwhile, Italy’s population is one of the oldest in Europe. Its birthrate, one of the lowest in the world, is now just 1.3 children per woman (less than half the rate of 40 years ago). For every 100 people in work, there are 28 retired.

Monday night’s televised debate between Berlusconi and Prodi offered no profound answers. But it is no coincidence that it focused on tax.

Berlusconi made what should have been a telling gibe at Prodi and the Centre Left’s propensity to raise taxes. Prodi has announced that he would bring back the inheritance tax that Berlusconi scrapped, but only for the “very rich”. If Berlusconi had made his point with less bombast (rather than shouting at the moderator, “Moderate!”, when Prodi was speaking), it might have driven home.

As it was, Prodi scored points for sounding like a conventional international politician, despite offering no answers.

The wrangles over tax spring from the heart of Italians’ worries about their falling standard of living: the threat that they will have to pay more, or lose services. The best answer, given their economic plight, is that they should do both, and give up cherished protection for jobs as well. But Italy seems unable to produce a politician who can propose those changes without softening them with “shock absorbers” that the country can no longer afford.

On Monday night, Prodi mocked that “the Prime Minister clings to data the way a drunkard clings to lampposts, not for illumination but to keep him standing up”. That stock retort of school debating teams was tired even in the 1960s (presumably when Prodi learnt it) — and is, anyway, of dubious logic. There is nothing wrong in looking for support.

The problem is that no Italian economic figures can deliver it. Nor, judging by Monday night, does either contender offer the answers to that crisis.

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