POLITICS is seldom boring for long in Italy. An election that takes place on February 24th and 25th had been mostly focused on an unpopular property tax. But it has become more spicily Italian with the injection of a financial scandal, Silvio Berlusconi’s latest outrage and a football star.

The scandal began on January 22nd when Giuseppe Mussari resigned as head of the Italian banking association. When chairman of the world’s oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), he allegedly approved dubious derivatives deals that were hidden from the regulators. What makes this political is that MPS is inseparable in the public mind from the left. Siena is in red Tuscany. Thirteen of the 16 directors of the foundation that is its biggest shareholder are political appointees.

The derivatives transactions were apparently meant to offset or hide the impact of the bank’s 2007 acquisition of Banca Antonveneta, which cost 36% more than had been paid for it only a month earlier by Spain’s Banco Santander. Italians are familiar with puzzlingly high purchase costs because they are often a source of kickbacks for politicians. Claims that the sale of Banca Antonveneta was used to create a slush fund are widely believed.

Even if untrue, they will damage the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), the election front-runner. Two surveys suggest that the scandal has cost the PD more than a percentage point. But they show groups backing Italy’s prime minister, Mario Monti, suffering even more. As a former adviser to Goldman Sachs, Mr Monti is seen as the bankers’ friend. Even before the scandal, MPS was in trouble and Mr Monti was under fire for using taxpayers’ cash to help it. On January 25th MPS’s shareholders approved a €3.9 billion ($5.3 billion) bail-out using “Monti bonds” underwritten by the treasury. Officials say they are no gift: the coupon is 9%, rising to a maximum of 15%. But Mr Monti’s opponents say he imposed his property tax so as to pay for saving the bank.

The obvious beneficiary is Silvio Berlusconi, whose right-wing alliance with the Northern League is gaining ground on the PD’s coalition with the more radical Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL) party. But on January 27th Mr Berlusconi did something that in most countries would have sunk him. On Holocaust memorial day he declared that, although Italy’s Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, should be blamed for enacting anti-Semitic race laws, he “in many other ways did well”.

Mr Berlusconi has said kind words about Mussolini before. But to do it on such an occasion smacked of premeditation. He is prone to gaffes. But he is also deft at using shock tactics to further his aims. Polls suggest that 20% of his potential voters are undecided or inclined to abstain. Mr Berlusconi may have been trying to stop them being lured away by the far right: among newcomers at this election is CasaPound, a movement named after Ezra Pound, an American poet (and fascist sympathiser). Or Mr Berlusconi may have wanted to reassure more bigoted voters ahead of his next headline-grabbing move.

On January 29th his football team, AC Milan, said it had bought the talented black Italian striker, Mario Balotelli. His transfer, for more than €20m, will delight fans, and not just in Lombardy, the region around Milan. The explosively powerful and controversial Mr Balotelli has been sorely missed from Italian football since leaving to join Manchester City three years ago. One Italian columnist said his return was worth 400,000 votes.

Even before the MPS scandal, polls suggested the left would not win control of the Senate without backing from Mr Monti and his group. Since the upper house has the same powers as the lower house, command of the Senate is essential for stable government. But the prospect now is that Italy’s next government may be a broad coalition stretching from the centre-right to the radical left, as heterogeneous as Romano Prodi’s team in 2006-08. That does not augur well for the tough reforms Italy needs to pep up its moribund economy.