The Tuscan countryside, with its cedar trees and air thick with the smell of goat’s cheese and focaccia, has always been a dream destination for the high achievers – including Tony Blair. In the summer of 1999, while the prime minister enjoyed his third consecutive holiday in the region, the journalist Quentin Letts questioned what was hiding in this paradise. Letts described a region unrecognisable from the oasis experienced by the English tourists in “their Ralph Lauren summer whites” – reporting on large-scale tax avoidance, the controlling Mafia, and an emerging pattern of dog poisonings. With the ongoing Kosovo war forcing the migration of over 10,000 people into Italy, many refugees were pushed into black-market jobs – which made up 20 per cent of the Italian workforce. Yet, as Letts reminded us, it was easy for the middle-class tourists to forget “about things such as the minimum wage and social justice”.
Ordinary Tuscans must think Tony Blair an odd sort of left-winger. Yes, it is gratifying that “Signor Toni”, the famous British prime minister (and a man who wears open-toed sandals better than most Inglesi), has chosen their province for the third year in succession for his summer holidays. But this statesman behind the high gates, with his walkie-talkie-toting security goons and his seemingly ever-present image advisers – can he really be such a man of the people?
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