ANOTHER VOICE

Madeleine Albright and the Italians have joined a

crusade — against the corrupt Inglesi

NICHOLAS FARRELL

SPredappio peaking to world leaders in the Swiss ski- resort of Davos on Sunday, Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, stated the obvious: corrupt politicians are one of the main threats to democracy. Yes, indeed. But then Mrs Albright did something remark- able. She singled out Britain — yes, Britain — along with Japan and Italy as countries whose commitment to stamping out such corruption 'has been anything but strong'.

We all know about Italian political corrup- tion which, given its ancient pedigree and Italy's geographical position, will never go away; and we sort of know, even though deeply mysterious and very far away, that the Japs are up to their necks in it as well.

But British politicians? Corrupt? Come off it, Mrs Albright. How dare you lump us in with the Nips and the Wops. And what about the French and the Germans for God's sake, and all this recent stuff about the Mitter- rand-Kohl slush fund for a Greater Europe? Not a word.

Remarkably, too, there was not a single word in the British media about this section of Mrs Albright's speech to the annual meet- ing of the World Economic Forum. Where was the Foreign Secretary when his country needed him? Where was the British media? 'You're the first person to contact us on this,' a Foreign Office spokesman told me, adding: 'It's an attack from a close ally on something we don't feel vulnerable on. It's out of the blue. We're rather annoyed. He [Robin] might want to comment.'

Here in Italy it was a different story. Mrs Albright's remarks were front-page news. 'The Disease of Corruption Undermines Italy and England', crowed the headline in La Stampa. The Turin daily was crowing not about Italian corruption. Corrupt Italian politicians are old news. No, La Stampa was crowing about corrupt British politicians.

Understandably, if everyone else is at it — especially the stuck-up British with all that guff about the British sense of fair play — it makes Italians feel less bad about their own corruption. All 'this corruption at the high- est political level in Germany, France and England. . . ' lamented Ida Magli, Italy's Lynda Lee-Potter, in If Resto del Carlin°. Signora Magli did at least mention France and Germany.

But what is it exactly we British are sup- posed to be up to on the corruption front that we're not stamping down on? No one ever seems to say. A few thousand quid which Mohamed Fayed may or not have bunged Neil Hamilton in a brown envelope? A spot of property dealing by Greg Dyke after he took up the post of BBC director general? The creative business goings-on of Geoffrey Robinson? Hackney? This is noth- ing compared to Italy where in the early 1990s the entire political system was exposed in the courts as rotten to the core. Italian politics nowadays, say some Italians, espe- cially Italian politicians, is cleaner. But most Italians do not believe this.

Stories such as Mrs Albright's one on British corruption, seized on so eagerly by the Italian press, make me realise that in life it is not the truth that matters but what peo- ple believe the truth to be. The British believe Britain is one thing; the world, cer- tainly the Italians, Mrs Albright probably, believe it is another.

For a story about Britain to have the legs to make it this far south it must knock down the traditional image of Britain and the British. Many stories have such legs. Recent examples include 'Myth of the Bobbies Inglesi Dies — They are Cruel and Unpunished'. Using a Council of Europe report on police abuse of power and violence in Europe, Ital- ian newspapers were able to say that the British bobby, far from being that smiling bloke with the funny hat as tradition would have it, is a violent bastard.

`L'Ombra del Fratello Grande Anglosas- sone' (The Shadow of the Anglo-Saxon Big Brother) was another. This was the old chest- nut about how the joint Anglo-American satellite spy system — known as Echelon — is said to be listening in on telephone and e- mail communications to steal Europe's com- mercial secrets and give them to American and British companies. So much for Anglo- Saxon fair play — another example of the Anglo-Saxon bid for world domination.

Inevitably, in such stories about Ameri- ca and Britain in cahoots against Europe we are described as the Anglosassone just as in the war when we were the enemies of Italy and Germany: a race apart, like the Jews. Britain on its own, incidentally, is always referred to demeaningly in Italian newspapers as L'Inghilterra; the British, as the Inglesi. Inevitably, too, whenever the Echelon story pops up there is no evidence supplied to back up the story. As one American security-service source once told me: 'What have the bloody French let alone the Italians got worth stealing?'

'Well, of course the Queen assassinated Diana,' say Italians. 'Why did she do a thing like that?' I respond wearily. 'She could not allow a member of the royal family to give birth to a Muslim,' they explain. 'I see,' I reply. What can I say? They have no proof that she did. I have no proof that she did not.

Churchill? Ah. A very, very bad man who would stop at nothing, even murder. Respected Italian historians are constantly leaping into print to say that Churchill indulged in a compromising secret corre- spondence with Mussolini offering Nice, Malta etc. to Il Duce to stay out of the war — compromising to Churchill that is. Last Sat- urday, the Times gave this absurd claim — for which no credible evidence has ever sur- faced — a large amount of space. The most famous Italian historian of fascism, Renzo De Felice, said (no evidence naturally) that Churchill, not Italian partisans, had Mussoli- ni and his mistress executed without trial to conceal the existence of the secret compro- mising letters.

On and on. So smog-ridden is London supposed to be that a colour common in dogs such as the pedigree Neapolitan Mastiff is Fumo di Londra. Jack Straw rides roughshod over the law to allow a convicted rapist, Mike Tyson, into Britain. He lets Pinochet off. So much for your famous British justice. British teachers urge children to have gay sex. You homosexuals, you.

Perhaps it does not matter that Italians believe this sort of thing. But Mrs Albright, a refugee from the Nazis, knows only too well the effect of political propaganda. OK, she did refer to us as 'Britain' not 'England' in her Davos speech, but by linking us to Italian political corruption she gave the Ital- ian press the opportunity to have a field day — another chance to 'prove' that the British are no different from the Italians, that according to the deeply cynical Italian view of human nature: tutto ii mondo e paese.

Oh yes, and by the way, did you know that the Yanks won the war on their own; the Brits and the Commonwealth were nowhere? That is why many Italians in my neck of the woods believe that the Indian Army war cemetery in the nearest big town is full of Red Indians — arranged by tribe presumably.

Come on Robin. Get in there, boy. Defend Britain from this bigoted Latin onslaught. Phone your special friend Madeleine. Now.