Spare a thought for my friend Carlo. Like many who lean left, last week he was hit by a a profound depression watching the deja-vu muppetry of Prodi’s government disintegrating. Carlo’s been here before. In 1998 when Fausto Bertinotti’s Rifondazione Comunista party withdrew its support from Prodi’s coalition, forcing a succession of caretaker governments which hobbled along until the 2001 election, it may have seemed to Carlo and many that it was simply poor political judgement on the part of the coalition.

Last week, though, the worst accusations thrown by Berlusconi and co – that the Italian left is simply incapable of keeping a government together – were hard to dismiss.

One simple observation (presented to mute response on Ballaro’ last night) sums it all up. In the last five elections (from 1992 onwards) Berlusconi, the unified leader of the right, has faced 4 different left wing candidates (Prodi ran against him twice, and won twice).

Now, there will almost certainly be elections within the next 4 months. Should President Napolitano appoint a caretaker government, it will be one charged with the main task of referming the electoral law (yet again) before calling new elections. On the other hand, he may just bite the bullet and dissolve parliament straight away, allowing the country to vote under the current electoral law.

Either way, voters like Carlo will face a choice between a unified right-wing which has, despite its huge internal contradictions, managed to govern for a full term (something hitherto unheard of in Italian politics), and a left-wing which is already fragmented and bitter in the wake of the crisis which collapsed the government.

The new leader of the PD party, the largest single centre-left party, Walter Veltroni, according to many analysts precipitated the fall of the government with his declaration that in the next election his party would run alone – an announcement that could hardly be welcomed by his coalition partners. Now Veltroni is faced with the unappetising choice of either running alone in the upcoming elections, and thus guaranteeing Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition a victory, or eating his words and putting together another coalition. Not that eating his words is any problem for the current Mayor of Rome – Veltroni asked in 2006 if he harboured ambitions for the leadership of the left responded that he had no intention of running, and would retire to do charity work in Africa once his mayoral mandate ran out. In any case, who will rush to vote for a centre-left coalition this time round?

So spare a thought for my friend Carlo. A man, like many, who’s convinced that Berlusconi’s conflicts of interest make it impossible to vote for a centre-right coalition. Who will Carlo vote for?