A month before he turns 80, Silvio Berlusconi has made a series of unexpected moves hinting that a singular force in Italian politics for over two decades is preparing to leave the spotlight.

The three-times prime minister and media tycoon recovered from a serious heart attack in June but was urged by doctors to take it easy. If it weren't for his health, this might have been the opportunity for another comeback, as his brand of celebrity populism and say-anything-and-get-away-with-it politics catches on in the era of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

Instead, he is headed for the exit. Berlusconi has named a likely successor at the helm of Forza Italia, his party which has been struggling to remain relevant. He has sold his beloved football team, AC Milan, whose success fueled his rise to power. He has even begun to sell off parts of his media empire, another tool he used effectively to support his political ambitions.

While he's still fighting on one front -- appealing a law that prevents him from holding a seat in the Italian Parliament because of a 2013 conviction on fiscal fraud -- it's clear Berlusconi will never again be the political force he was during his golden age.

“He has started to retire, by selling some of his media activities and trying, at the same time, to find a way to protect the future of his business by finding a [political] successor that can guarantee him a good relationship with the government,” said Stefano Quintarelli, a lawmaker from a moderate party set up by former European Commissioner Mario Monti, who served as Italy's prime minister after Berlusconi resigned in 2011 during the debt crisis.

In an environment of transformismo, with lawmakers switching parties in growing numbers, Forza Italia has been especially hard-hit.

Berlusconi — notorious for his irreverent humor, gaffes, "Bunga-Bunga" sex scandals and his ability to escape prosecutors who for almost two decades have tried to nail him for tax evasion, corruption, false accounting and other crimes — has not said publicly that he's quitting politics for good. But the mere suggestion that he is retiring as party leader is shifting the landscape as Italy once again faces questions about its economic stability and about political leadership.

Forza Italia has lost ground in parliament in recent years to the populist Northern League, which has had success luring center-right politicians with its anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic stance. In an environment of transformismo, with lawmakers switching parties in growing numbers, Forza Italia has been especially hard-hit — more than 100 leaving it for other parties. It's also been slipping in the polls. In the 2013 national elections, his party lost more than 6 million votes from its showing in the previous elections in 2008, when it came first.

Part of that is due to Forza Italia's association with Berlusconi -- and the past.

“Italians are not prepared to believe in him anymore," said pollster Roberto D'Alimonte. "He still has 10-15 percent support but he no longer has any chance of being a leader.”

Conspiracy theory

Berlusconi's health problems have been the main factor driving his apparent retreat. After the June heart attack, his physician urged the former prime minister to step down as party leader.

But there are other factors at play. One is the poor economic performance of the country, which in the last 20 years — a period in which Berlusconi served three terms a prime minister promising tax cuts that never materialized — has seen virtually no growth.

“Berlusconi has never really reduced taxation and that was his biggest mistake, he had a great majority in Parliament and he could have reduced the fiscal pressure that suffocates the country,” said Giulio Sapelli, professor of economic history at the University of Milan. "Monti was elected prime minister because of the terrible economic situation left by Berlusconi.”

Monti's appointment to replace Berlusconi in 2011 came during the peak of the European debt crisis, amid concerns that Italy — the third largest economy in the eurozone — was headed down the same perilous road as Greece.

Berlusconi and his allies have long seen his ousting as part of a European plot involving German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has never been a fan of his antics. (In one famous instance, he jumped out from behind a monument in Trieste shouting "cuckoo" at her as she arrived for a meeting). Such suspicions were bolstered by the publication of a book by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggesting that the U.S. government had been asked to help force Berlusconi to resign as the crisis escalated in late 2011. But Monti has always denied any conspiracy, pointing out that Berlusconi's party voted for his new government.

The irony is that now Europe needs Berlusconi to succeed in efforts to revive Forza Italia, whose members in the European Parliament belong to the same center-right bloc as Merkel's conservatives. If he fails, Italian moderates could increasingly be lured to Euroskeptic fringes.

No more Midas touch

To relaunch his party for a new era, Berlusconi has appointed a former city manager and telecom CEO, Stefano Parisi, who as the center-right candidate in Milan in June's local elections came close to a victory.

A moderate with political roots in the Left but no experience at national level, Parisi is in many ways the opposite of Berlusconi: a soft-spoken technocrat. It won't be clear until he unveils his plans for revamping the party later this month whether Parisi has any chance of succeeding with a strategy to stop hemorrhaging moderate votes to the Northern League.

“I would like him to succeed because I would like to have a modern and not extremist center-right,” said Alessia Mosca, an MEP from Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party.

The Northern League's leader, 43-year-old MEP Matteo Salvini, doesn't think Parisi has much hope of success.

“It is unclear what Parisi has to do,” Salvini told POLITICO. “I don't think he will go very far.”

But Antonio Tajani, a vice president of the European Parliament and longtime Berlusconi lieutenant, said the task now facing Forza Italia is clear.

"I know him. He will never be the one who quits” — Antonio Tajani

“Berlusconi wants somebody who can widen the party's political base,” said Tajani. Ever the loyalist, he insisted Berlusconi was not really giving up the leadership. "I know him," Tajani said. "He will never be the one who quits.”

Another Italian political heavyweight and former Berlusconi ally, Gianfranco Fini, said the appointment of Parisi and the sale of the football club “have no political meaning. He has simply tasked a person he trusts to relaunch his party, but we'll see in September if he can make it.”

Regardless of how Italian politicians see Berlusconi's moves, few doubt that his time has passed. Many say he is trying to give the party time to reset itself ahead of elections expected in 2018.

The sale of AC Milan, in August, is another sign of his diminishing political role. With its four Italian championships and three Champions League tournaments won in the eight years before he entered politics, the team was instrumental in giving him the aura of the man with the Midas touch. The football connection even gave Berlusconi's party its name (Forza Italia means "let's go Italy").

“It is the end of an era," wrote sociologist Ilvo Diamanti in La Repubblica of the team's sale.

Not (really) like Trump

Change is also coming to Berlusconi's media empire — the one realm where he still holds real power. He has already begun selling off some of his television empire to a French tycoon, Vincent Bolloré, 64, the top shareholder of Vivendi — though the two are now clashing over the agreed sale of Berlusconi's pay-TV that Bolloré is now refusing to pursue.

Berlusconi is making his gradual exit just as his controversial brand of flamboyant, anti-political populism becomes the new normal in several countries.

Berlusconi's Italy was "the definition of a post-democratic state” — David Van Reybrouck

The former Italian prime minister is credited -- or blamed -- for being one of the founders and most successful practitioners of what British sociologist Colin Crouch calls "post-democratic" politics.

Berlusconi's Italy, says David Van Reybrouck, the Belgian author of the book "Against Elections," was "the definition of a post-democratic state.”

Berlusconi was also one the first political figures to act like a rock star, allowed to say things and behave in ways that are normally forbidden for elected officials. That template has now been taken to the extreme by Trump.

But despite the apparent similarities -- the money, the sexual escapades, the elaborate skin-tinting and hairstyling -- Berlusconi rejects any comparison to Trump, according to one of his closest allies. Unlike the real-estate tycoon and U.S. presidential candidate, the Italian considers himself a self-made man.