He burst on to Italy’s political scene two years ago promising to reshape his country’s moribund politics, but it was an exhausted, careworn Matteo Renzi who urged Italians to say "yes" to his constitutional reforms when they vote in a referendum on Sunday.

"We have 48 decisive hours in which we can change the future of our children,” Mr Renzi told crowds in his hometown of Florence, choosing the city’s symbolic Piazza della Signoria - where the preacher Savonarola carried out his famous bonfire of the vanities - as the venue for his campaign finale.