THE WORD ON THE STRADA
Nicholas Farrell reports on the exotic
company awaiting the Blair party on the Tuscan coast
San Rossore, Pisa THEY call them the lucciole, the fireflies who stand by the road. They will be there on Sunday when the Blair motorcade sweeps past on the Via Aurelia Nord. They stand in their stilettos and little else, here on this single carriageway rat-run, along which lorries hurl at terrifying Speeds past some of the most squalid con- sequences of mass tourism anywhere in the Mediterranean.
When Tony and Cherie and their chil- dren arrive in Italy this weekend to stay M the Villa del Gombo, a hunting lodge owned by the Tuscan regional council, they will soon see the difference between this benighted coastline and Chiantishire. When Nicky and Kathryn and Euan press their noses to the windows of the car, they Will see video-game parlours, fast-food outlets, caravan sites, karaoke joints, kick- boxing dens and hotels called 'California'. The municipal beach is a strip of mud- coloured sand, whose only point of interest is the part of it which has become a gay colony, encouraged by the socialist Viareg- gio council, on the grounds that gays need to be able to express themselves. The inno- cent and impressionable Blair children will see the railway line which runs by the beach for mile after monotonous mile, and, on the adjoining road, they will see the hookers; and you might say, at the risk of being pompous, that these fireflies are the guilty conscience of the West. Tony Blair will spend his annual Tuscan holiday surrounded by fallen women from the poorest nations on earth. Some of them are from Serbia; some are even from the formerly Serb province of Kosovo. Yes, they are from places that Blair has actually bombed; though he is, we must hope, unlikely to emulate his hero, Gladstone, and discover them for himself before he sweeps into the wooded sanctuary of the 19th-cen- tury hunting lodge. He must take it from me that they charge as little as £10 for full inter- course — no kissing, mind you — provided You have a car. But, if Mr Blair did screw up his courage to ask them the time of day, he would not find them ill-disposed. 'Anyone is better than Thatcher,' is the °Pinion of one lady, and Angela from Alba- nia, a big blonde, as big as anything Fellini could muster, is vaguely under the impres- sion that he is the Prime Minister of her very own country. One can imagine, when one thinks of recent television coverage of Mr Blair's travels to the Balkans, how that idea has taken root. Yes, Tony Blair could expect a warmish, if apathetic welcome from some of the girls, for whom politics is as remote as a heartfelt kiss. The only trou- ble is, they will not be alone in wait for him on the Via Aurelia Nord, Mr Blair may be fond of Italy; he may be here by invitation of Signor Vannino Chiti, the post-post-post- communist president of the Tuscan regional council. But around here the communists are strong: they achieved 15 per cent of the vote in the regional elections in June, and they do not like Tony Blair one bit.
Signor Roberto Pucci, the communist capogruppo, has a plan. He wishes to mark the Blairs' arrival, to let them know how decent Italian communists feel. There is talk of sit-ins at the entrance to the lodge, and possibly some seaborne activity, by means of pedalo, towards the vast private beach at the back. Partly, he says, he wish- es to show dissatisfaction at Mr Blair's brand of socialism, and partly at the bomb- ing, which, he believes, is the ultimate manifestation of that flexible ideology. 'These actions are to express our opinion that Mr Blair is not welcomed by all the people of Tuscany. These actions will be peaceful — un po all'inglese,' he said, adding, 'Blair and Clinton are not as bad as Milosevic but they should be brought to trial for war crimes as well as him.' But why direct your wrath at poor Tony, I asked Signor Pucci. What about Massimo D'Alema, Italy's 65th prime minister since the war, whose Democrazia Sinistra is the closest thing to New Labour? Didn't he also support the bombing? 'Yes, but he at least gave the impression of not being very happy about the bombardments,' Signor Pucci replied. 'Clinton and Blair seemed apparently happy to do these things.'
If Signor Pucci is passionate in his antipathy, that may have something to do with Italian television coverage during the war, which had a Pavlovian knack of show- ing footage of carnage caused by allied bombing, followed by footage of Mr Blair. Since Mr Blair is usually pictured grinning, many Italians have received an unfortunate impression about his attitude, and that feeling may be aggravated by their own reluctance, throughout, to take part in the bombing. Don't forget, most of the bomb- ing of Serbia and Kosovo was done by planes based in Italy and, if it had not been for the support of right-wing opposition parties, the D'Alema government would have had no choice but to resign.
The bombing, of course, is not Signor Pucci's only reason for objecting to the arrival of Tony. Almost worse than his hawk- ishness in Kosovo is the plutocracy, the ostentation, of his holiday destination. This hunting lodge — it would be not just a royal lodge, but a royal hunting lodge, wouldn't it? — is an oasis, a refuge from the nightmare world of the Via Aurelia Nord, whose hor- rors I have feebly tried to evoke. It is forti- fied by barbed wire, guards, walls and dense, enormous woods. The Blairs are not only the first foreign visitors to be allowed to use the premises; they are also the first people to use it since 1996, when it ceased to be the sum- mer residence of the Italian president, a function the lodge had fulfilled since 1946.
What gets Signor Pucci's goat is that the Tuscan region has spent £350,000 of tax- payers' money giving it a face-lift, cleaning up the piles of rubbish washed up on the private beach and installing two beach huts, complete with showers. And all for the sake of Mr Tony Blair and his bambinos! 'The region designated this place as a cen- tre for conferences, not for a private indi- vidual to use for his own holiday at the expense of the people of Tuscany, says Sig- nor Pucci. This is wrong, I think.'
On the other hand, I expect many loyal and patriotic Spectator readers will also feel it wrong that our exhausted Prime Minister should have his repose disturbed. It is a dif- ficult question. Many will sympathise with the British fox-hunters, who plan to turn up with the hookers and the communists on the Via Aurelia, and shake their fists and parp their horns as the Blair convoy goes by; and yet one does not want to alarm the children, let alone on holiday. Perhaps it would be enough if the hookers, the com- mies and the hunters could rent a single pedalo, and make their various points at a respectful distance from the beach.
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