ITALY can be an oddity in Europe. It is the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) that is most anxious to apply the fiscal austerity enjoined by the European Commission and the Germans, whereas the right-wing People of Freedom (PdL) movement under Silvio Berlusconi is keen to ignore deficit ceilings in an effort to revive Italy’s stagnant economy—and, conveniently, to fulfil Mr Berlusconi’s campaign promise of lower taxes. The trouble is that left and right are yoked together in the government led by the PD’s Enrico Letta.

The two parties’ clashes are increasingly denting the government’s credibility. In May Mr Letta’s cabinet suspended, but did not scrap, a property tax that the PdL wants to abolish. On June 26th it put off, though only for three months, a 1% rise in value-added tax that the PdL wants to avoid.

The policy emerging from this is fiscal relaxation by deferral. Two developments raise questions about how long this can be pursued before alarm bells sound in Brussels and Berlin. One was a rise in bond yields prompted by the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it would at some point be reducing its injections of cash into the bond market. The second was a report—denied by the Italian treasury—that Italy’s apparently modest budget deficit, of under 3% of GDP, disguises a €8.1 billion hole resulting from derivative bargains that the country struck when it was struggling to qualify for the euro in the 1990s.

As if to increase the tensions between the PdL and the PD even further, Mr Berlusconi learned on June 24th that a court in Milan had convicted him of paying for the sexual services of a Moroccan runaway-turned-dancer, Karima El-Mahroug (“Ruby the heart-stealer”). Ms El-Mahroug was 17 at the time, below the legal minimum for prostitution. Mr Berlusconi was sentenced to seven years in jail and banned for life from holding public office. His lawyers will appeal, blocking the application of both measures.

Only one year of Mr Berlusconi’s sentence was for the juvenile prostitution offence. The other six were for unlawfully exploiting his official position. In May 2010, after Ms El-Mahroug was detained for unconnected reasons, he rang the police in Milan who, instead of putting her into care, released her to a regional PdL lawmaker who has since been put on trial in a separate case, accused of procuring women for sex romps at the media tycoon’s home. The prosecutors who arraigned Mr Berlusconi claimed that he had encouraged the police to act as they did. The judges decided that he had coerced them: a more serious offence, but for which they handed down only the minimum sentence.

In a clear sign of contempt for Mr Berlusconi’s version of events—he had insisted his “Bunga Bunga” evenings were merely elegant dinners—the judges also asked prosecutors to study the testimony of more than 30 witnesses who had spoken in his defence to see if they should be indicted for perjury. Neither the former prime minister nor his lieutenants had expected such a harsh verdict. Mr Berlusconi called it “incredible”. For more than 20 years, his family’s newspaper and his television channels have been depicting him as a victim of Marxist inquisitors and hinting that their campaign is remotely controlled within the PD. They have been saying this for so long that they seem to have convinced not only millions of Italians but also Mr Berlusconi himself.

As Andrea Mammone, a lecturer at Royal Holloway University in London, notes, his recent comments suggest that he “thought that backing Letta’s coalition had guaranteed him some form of protection”. By the same logic, the former prime minister would have nothing to lose—and everything to gain—were he to bring down the government and force an election on the issue of his supposed persecution.

But his conviction in the vice trial could yet be overturned by a higher court. And after a lacklustre performance in local elections last month, the PdL’s chances of victory now look poor. A bigger, if less titillating, danger for Mr Berlusconi and the government will come this autumn when a case in which he has already been convicted of tax fraud is due to enter its final phase. Mr Letta looks safe until then.