On the face of it, this week’s local election results are bad news for Silvio Berlusconi. In votes in 1,300 towns, cities and provinces across Italy, the opposition made twice as many gains as the prime minister’s centre-right coalition. Most striking, though, was the result in Milan, the beating heart of Italian business and Mr Berlusconi’s electoral stronghold. In the first round of a contest billed by Mr Berlusconi as a referendum on his government, the centre-right candidate was left trailing by her centre-left challenger; support for the Northern League also tumbled.

Yet it would be a mistake to read too much into this setback for the ruling coalition. The results do not offer a national snap-shot: only a quarter of the electorate was eligible to vote. The real lesson is that the country’s centre-left remains in disarray. In 2005, a string of centre-left victories in regional elections showed that the opposition was finally sufficiently organised to challenge Mr Berlusconi. He was duly ousted in a general election the following year. This week’s results are far less decisive.

The outcome in Naples is a case in point. A split in the opposition vote between a small, anti-Berlusconi party and the main centre-left grouping has given the centre-right a chance of victory in the second round. Until the Italian left moves beyond internecine feuding, even a leader as flawed as Mr Berlusconi will be hard to dislodge.

That is a serious setback for Italy. The country’s political gridlock has long been the obstacle to economic reform. However this stasis has reached its nadir under Mr Berlusconi. Despite styling himself as a dynamic friend of business, the prime minister has diverted scarce parliamentary time from structural reforms to his rabid crusade against the judiciary. Last year, key decisions on nuclear policy were delayed for five months by his inability to appoint a minister for industry.

The result is that as France and Germany continue their recovery from the economic crisis, Italy is stagnating. Recent figures showed that the economy grew at a measly 0.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2011. Foreign investment is falling; one in four youths is unemployed; government debt has hit €1,800bn.

Given the inability of the current crop of opposition leaders to unite against Mr Berlusconi, it will take a new generation to bring Italy the political and economic renewal it so badly needs. As the nomination of Mario Draghi to head the European Central Bank shows, Italy is not short on talent. If only it could deploy it at home.