Bettino Craxi, who has died aged 65, was Italy's longest serving post-war prime minister (1983-87), filling the office with considerable aplomb and presiding over a period of strong economic growth; but he will be remembered as a tragic symbol of Italy's devastating corruption scandal and the man who effectively destroyed the Italian Socialist party (PSI).
The vigorous politician who represented Italy with unaccustomed authority on the international stage spent his declining years in judicial exile in Tunisia, nursing failing health and his grievances against those he blamed for his downfall. A master tactician, he lacked strategic vision and left little to his successors but the ruins of a political system he once played to his own advantage with consummate skill.
Born in Milan, the son of a Sicilian lawyer, Craxi dropped out of university to devote himself to politics. He joined the PSI and became a member of the Milan regional executive committee aged only 18. A protege of Pietro Nenni and a staunch anti-communist, Craxi became party secretary in 1976 after a palace coup mounted against the incumbent secretary, Francesco De Martino. The party colonels who supported him were confident they could get rid of him within a matter of months if he proved insufficiently malleable. Sixteen years later Craxi was still there, having outmanouevred all his rivals to obtain absolute control over the party. During his tenure Craxi managed to lever up support for the PSI from 9.6% to 14.8% at the 1989 European elections, but by then total collapse was not far off.
Craxi began his political career as a reformist and moderniser, emphasising the need to restore morality to public life after a series of political scandals. An effective communicator with a keen appreciation of the importance of the media, Craxi was able to convince middle-class voters that the PSI was the party most in tune with the new generation of thrusting entrepreneurs responsible for the "economic miracle" of the mid-1980s. His autocratic leadership style, known as "decisionismo", marked a refreshing change from endless political wrangling and ineffective policy implementation, the hallmarks of Christian Democrat rule.
Craxi was masterly in exploiting the PSI's pivotal role in a series of centrist coalitions, threatening to pull down the government unless his partners conceded ministerial posts and positions of command in the state sector.
The socialists revealed a scientific ruthlessness in the way they squeezed money and influence from the government spoils system. Party supporters were appointed to key management positions on the understanding that they would cream off funds for the benefit of their political masters, and illegal kickbacks were demanded in return for almost all public contracts.
The socialists were not alone at the banquet of graft, but they had a particularly voracious appetite. It has been estimated that in Milan, the heartland of Craxi's political support, bribes worth £60m changed hands annually during the boom years of his premiership: 50% went to the PSI, 20% to the Christian Democrats, 20% to the Communists and the rest to the minor government parties. The system, known as Tangentopoli (Bribesville), collapsed when a combination of increasing political greed and economic recession made the burden unbearable for the businessmen who were footing the bill.
Craxi's spectacular style of politics was costly. Party conferences were not gatherings of earnest socialist working men, but theatrical productions frequented by a social elite of fashion designers, architects, financiers and intellectuals. There was little meaningful internal debate, simply the acclamation of the charismatic leader. His party colleague Rino Formica dismissed the conference-goers as a court of "dwarves and dancing girls".
The austerity preached by Craxi when he first became secretary had long been forgotten. "The standard of living of the great majority of Socialist leaders has nothing to do with the working class," party dissident Elio Veltri complained in 1981. The style did have advantages, however. In 1983 Craxi became prime minister and cut quite a dash on the world stage. Tall, balding, self-confident, he appeared to deal on equal terms with other global leaders, unlike some of his physically puny Christian Democrat predecessors. So commanding was his manner that the cartoonist Giorgio Forattini took to depicting him in the riding boots and black shirt of Benito Mussolini.
Craxi broke a long tradition of servility towards the US by facing down President Ronald Reagan over the hijack of the Achille Lauro cruise liner. The Italian premier flatly refused to hand over the Palestinian leader Abu Abbas to the Americans, who suspected him of involvement in the hijack.
US fighter jets had forced Abbas's plane to land at the Sigonella air base in Sicily, and a tense standoff ensued between American and Italian military personnel present in the base. Craxi's steadfast defence of what he saw as the principles of national sovereignty and international law won him plaudits and ultimately did little harm to the country's "special relationship" with America.
During his two administrations, the government succeeded in reducing inflation by trimming the system of automatic wage indexation and negotiated a new concordat with the Vatican to replace the 1929 Lateran Pact. At the same time, little was done to tackle the massive budget deficit and nothing to advance political reform. While the Mafia flourished largely unchecked in southern Italy, Craxi busied himself with a series of offensives against the independence of the magistrature.
Arrogance and abuse of power were among the unattractive characteristics of the Craxi era, with his brother-in-law installed as mayor of Milan and his son, Vittorio, elected party secretary in the city. A major contributor to the election campaign of the young "Bobo" Craxi was Mario Chiesa, the Socialist director of Milan's largest geriatric home. It was Chiesa's arrest in 1992, on charges of pocketing a £3,000 bribe, that opened the floodgates of the Clean Hands judicial investigation.
Craxi was a close friend of the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. When in 1984 a magistrate ruled that Berlusconi's three national television networks were broadcasting illegally, Craxi rushed through a decree to get them back on air again. Pursued by magistrates on suspicion of having handled more than £100m-worth of political bribes, Craxi resigned as party secretary in February 1993 and the following year went into voluntary exile in Tunisia.
As prime minister he had been a supporter of the Palestinian cause and had many friends in the Middle East. Socialist policy towards the developing world was generous, if wasteful, with much development aid ending up in the pockets of Italian entrepreneurs and politicians.
Afflicted by diabetes, he spent his last years writing about Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification, and sending self-justificatory faxes to newspaper editors from his seaside villa in Hammamet. The man who dominated the political scene in his heyday was latterly a lonely and embittered exile.
Betrayed by his passion for politics, and the financial requirements it entailed, he became, perhaps unjustly, the focus of national wrath against corruption. Pelted with coins by an angry crowd as he emerged from his headquarters in Rome's Hotel Raphael, his departure from the political scene could not have been more dramatic.
He married Anna Maria Moncini in 1959 and they had a son and a daughter.