Opposition female senators shorten their skirts in the Chamber in protest against Tajani (and Vannacci sees them naked)

For Antonio Tajani, more fabric means more virtue; for the opposition, less fabric means more freedom; for Roberto Vannacci, no fabric at all is even better. It should be noted that Giorgia Meloni’s appeal not to ‘exaggerate’ Tajani’s remarks about women in long skirts being more trustworthy is being taken seriously – in fact, no one is exaggerating: everyone is toning it down. Vannacci tells our Carmelo Caruso that he prefers women without skirts, and at four in the afternoon, whilst Milan Fashion Week continues with the Diesel show, in Rome eleven centre-left female senators enter Palazzo Madama in miniskirts. “Because feminism isn’t a gala dinner,” says PD Senator Valeria Valente, a variation on a theme by Mao, even though the atmosphere – if you’ll pardon the irreverence – is more like that of a cocktail party. Susanna Camusso, who was once general secretary of the CGIL trade union, is wearing a floral skirt just above the knee, paired with a pair of trainers – springtime on top, a picket line below – and recounts that “on my first day’s work amongst the metalworkers in 1975, I went there dressed more or less like this”. In short, the tailor’s tape measure now marks the start of the election campaign. 

Because the 2027 election campaign, it seems, will also be fought on the brink, and the Italian political landscape – which for a century has been divided between right and left – has, in the last seventy-two hours, been redrawn between above and below the knee, with a third way, represented by Vannacci, which consists of abolishing the knee as a boundary. After all, Tajani was talking about the election campaign last Friday. The flashy, unfaithful girl against whom he was warning his son – in his not exactly felicitous metaphor – was Futuro Nazionale, the General’s party, which has overtaken the League in the polls and has already seduced a couple of ‘Azzurri’ MPs this summer; whilst the modest bride with the demure hem and covered legs was Forza Italia, which, in Tajani’s view, was meant to appear trustworthy but now risks appearing merely less courted. The Deputy Prime Minister had intended to expose the general, but yesterday he ended up exposing the centre-left – in short, the famous and troubled ‘broad coalition’ that has shortened its skirt with the enthusiasm of those who have finally found a common programme.

The idea came from Raffaella Paita, leader of Italia Viva, who yesterday led the flotilla in a pleated skirt and a pink jacket with gold buttons, like a flagship on a day off, demonstrating that centrism also has its own sartorial style, made up of pleats that open with each step and close again when she stands still. Simona Malpezzi diagnosed Tajani with ‘intrinsic patriarchy’, as one might describe a manufacturing defect. But to respond to a metaphor with a hemline is perhaps to accept its metric system, and the opposition, convinced it had refuted the minister, may well have proved him right on the one point that mattered: namely, that a skirt says something about the woman wearing it. The only point of debate is which way round to read the centimetre. But if freedom grows as the skirt gets shorter, then supreme freedom coincides with its absence, and this bizarre and vulgar theorem has already been proven by Vannacci, who, by strict deduction, becomes – given his preferences – the most radical feminist in Parliament. Tajani’s flippant remark and the opposition’s response in centimetres—which seemed like sworn enemies—are thus inadvertently working with zeal for the third party, the only one that has been gaining ground for months, and calls it percentage points.