All roads lead to Rome? We should be so lucky

New Statesman​

5 days ago

Illustration by Charlotte Trounce
Last week I swapped the soundscape of urban London summer – the clicking gears of stolen Lime Bikes – for an equally monotonous sound: the cicadas general to a Tuscan evening, not to mention the high-pitched whirr of a mosquito about to commit a bloodthirsty strike on your ankles. And in my case, face. This is what Virgil's Eclogues were all about.
For one month a year, Britain offloads most of New Labour to Chianti's rolling hills. Tony Blair used to spend August in those spruced-up rubble-stone farm houses. And the turkey twizzler Duce, Jamie Oliver, is such a fan of one local butcher in the hilltop town of Panzano he glibly refers to it as his 'second home'. So popular is the region with the other sort of leftish tribunes that in the early Noughties it received a new moniker: Chiantishire. Thank God for the perfectly calibrated social consciences of the invading Brits, otherwise the Italians might have a problem with this.
The establishment anxiety – that Britain is slowly coming to resemble the Old Boot – is acute, no matter their affinity for the place. Plagued by low growth, regional inequality, general instability, populist gadflies and at the mercy of the bond markets? 'Welcome to Britaly' the Economist warned in 2022.
I was sitting on a government owned-and-operated train from Rome to Florence, wondering if that would be so bad. The leather seats and postmodern interiors displayed a level of taste the good people at TfL do not possess. I assumed the waspy Italian businessman beside me was the CEO of Al Italia, or something. Thinking of the many hours I've spent delayed on a Great Western train in England, 'Welcome to Britaly' started to sound more like an aspiration than an omen.
The illusion was soon broken. I arrived at the elegant squalor of Florence's train station, Santa Maria Novella, to discover that there was a citywide taxi strike. Though you would be forgiven for not noticing at all – there were no placards, no crowds, and seemingly scant industrial motive (if there was one beyond ambient dissatisfaction it certainly went unexpressed). I only discovered it was happening when I walked up to a small group of men smoking – the taxi drivers – and asked if one of them could drive me to the countryside. 'No, strike,' he said, gesturing limply to a bus station.
The spectacle was so unspectacular I wondered if this is what the Tour de France would look like if it were organised by the bikes. Or what an Italian taxi strike would look like, if it were organised by Italian taxi drivers. Up the workers, etc. But it left me in a pickle: rural Tuscan bus services are not as good as the trains.
So I did what any accomplished 29-year-old would do in this situation and called my brother. He collected me – after I dashed across Florence to the gates of the city – and in the car we reflected on how reassured the hand-wringy British establishment might be with this unfortunate turn of events. Put to shame by the trains, yes. But here is rhetorical justification for the superiority complex: sure, we have ceded our sovereignty to the long arm of the bond markets, and yes political instability typified the latter half of the 2010s with tremendous force. But those Euros, so lazy!
The ponderous and haughty northern Europeans might be concerned they are turning into their southern European cousins. But they haven't nailed the key details of the transition, which is this: they are halfway there politically, but culturally they never will be. Michelangelo was just more important than whatever Albrecht Dürer came up with. The Protestant probity of Britannia is anathema to the south's winking Catholic loucheness. And tomatoes, we all know, are better consumed on the ultramontane side of things.
And so, on a train back to Rome (wait, is that also the CEO of Al Italia?) I am unable to take their concern very seriously. The land that produced the Trevi fountain will never resemble one that boasts the blandly demure Eros in Piccadilly Circus. And what of the stolid Land Rover vs the unembarrassed Ferrari? Ale vs Sangiovese? Welcome to Britaly? We would never be so lucky
[See also: Kemi Badenoch isn't working]
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