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The Italian PM’s government must resign if it fails to win more votes than the opposition on Friday Silvio Berlusconi is to stake the fate of his government and his own political future on a confidence vote in parliament on Friday. Standing before a half-empty chamber boycotted by the opposition, he appealed on Thursday for support from the chamber of deputies, the lower house of the Italian parliament, saying: “There are no alternatives.” Berlusconi decided to seek a vote of confidence after losing a crucial division on the public accounts earlier this week. The result of the confidence vote is due at around 11.30am GMT on Friday. To survive, the government needs only to secure more votes than the opposition. If it loses, it is constitutionally bound to resign. All but six deputies were missing from the opposition benches when the prime minister got up to speak, the main opposition parties having decided to stay away from the debate in protest at Berlusconi’s refusal to step down. Under mounting pressure from the courts, where he is a defendant in three trials, the prime minister leads an increasingly fractious party. However, one of the biggest question marks hanging over Friday’s vote was removed when his chief ally, Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Northern League, confirmed his support for Berlusconi’s rightwing coalition. “The government will still be here tomorrow evening,” he told reporters after listening to the prime minister’s speech. But there is still a risk that individual maverick deputies will stay away in numbers sufficient to bring down the government. This week brought a high-profile defection in the person of Santo Versace, the brother of the designers Donatella and the late Gianni Versace. Santo Versace was elected for Berlusconi’s party, the Freedom People (PdL), when the right stormed back into power three years ago. But, he said: “The economic situation is critical. I’ll be voting against [the government] because it is better to change.” The latest crisis to engulf Berlusconi’s government has come in the midst of the eurozone emergency at a time when Italy is battling to convince investors of its creditworthiness, despite massive public debts of around 120% of GDP. So far this year the government has passed four increasingly stringent austerity packages aimed at reducing the budget deficit. But it has been fiercely criticised, not only by trade unions but also employers’ groups, for neglecting measures to stimulate economic growth. Unusually for a conservative government, Berlusconi’s is under open attack from the leading bosses’ federation, Confindustria. Alarm over the state of the economy also helps to explain the emergence in recent weeks of critical factions in the PdL, notably one centred on a former minister, Claudio Scajola, who resigned last year in an alleged corruption scandal. Bossi too has been having difficulty controlling the League where dissatisfaction is growing over his autocratic style of leadership. He was barracked at a congress last weekend in Varese, north of Milan, after he imposed a new, unelected local party secretary. Scajola said he and his followers would support the government on Friday and the PdL’s parliamentary business managers appeared confident they could muster enough votes in the 630-member chamber. There has been widespread media speculation that rebels in the Northern League and Berlusconi’s own party would prefer to wait until January before delivering a fatal blow to the government. That could clear the way for an election in the spring – before taxpayers start to feel the full effects of the tax rises and spending cuts imposed in recent months. But with Berlusconi’s approval rating below 25% in the polls, the right has a vast amount of ground to make up. The president, Giorgio Napolitano, does not have to dissolve parliament until 2013, however, if there is enough support for a cross-party “technical” government to steer Italy out of the eurozone crisis and perhaps recast the country’s much-criticised electoral system. A frequently mooted candidate for prime minister is the economist and former EU commissioner Mario Monti. Berlusconi discounted the idea in his speech to the chamber: “The problems of the country cannot be resolved by a technical government not democratically legitimated to make choices that in the present circumstance would also be unpopular ones,” he said. Silvio Berlusconi Italy Europe John Hooper guardian.co.uk