Yesterday, Silvio Berlusconi won the elections in Italy. Since he is the leader of the center right coalition that won big yesterday, he will become the country’s new prime minister; the one before him, Romano Prodi, was forced to resign after only 20 months in office.

Huge, perhaps historic, victory for Berlusconi’s “Popolo della liberta’ ” (which translates a bit awkwardly as “the people of liberty;” maybe it’s better to call it “the freedom folks”). It’s considerably worse than AP lets on. Berlusconi defeated Walter Veltroni’s “Democratic Party” by a full 9 points in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. And since the Italian electoral system gives a bonus to the winning side, the margins are very big and stable: 340 to 241 in the Chamber (with another 36 for a couple of small parties), and 167 to 137 in the Senate (with 5 to three little parties), which was expected to be a photo finish. Eighty percent voted, down about three percent from last time.

The big news is that the Communists are gone, for the first time since the end of the Second World War. Really gone. They didn’t win a single seat in either chamber. A lot of famous faces will vanish from Parliament, and it is even possible, although unlikely, that some of the comrades will be forced to join the working class. The Greens are also gone. In fact, there are only six parties in the new Parliament, suggesting that Italy’s well on the road to a two-party political system instead of the dreadful proportional electoral model that has destroyed virtually every country where it’s been applied. If that happens, a lot of the credit goes to Veltroni, who created a real center-left party and refused to admit the old Left.

What does this mean? Simple; yet another European country is ruled by conservatives. And by quite a solid majority; you can expect Berlusconi to serve out his term.

And he will probably also play an important role in Europe again. Which is also a good thing; France, Germany and Italy - all three big European countries - ruled by conservatives. Hopefully my country is next (and that’s likely if we look at the polls).

Italy needs Berlusconi, by the way, the economy is - once again - a mess. The country needs conservative solutions; no more welfare, no more handouts.

More here.