Giorgia Meloni's government reaches 1,413 days in power tomorrow. That makes it the longest-serving government in Italian history, one day more than Silvio Berlusconi's second government, which lasted 1,412 days from June 2001 to April 2005. Back in May the Italian government was second on that list. Tomorrow it is first.

In a country where the average lifespan of a government is measured in months rather than terms, four years of unbroken rule is a statistical anomaly. Italy has changed dozens of governments since the Second World War. This is the first time anyone has lasted that whole stretch without their own coalition falling apart.

The numbers they are boasting about

The Brothers of Italy party is preparing a rally in Bari for 4 September, and the list of results is already packed: an employment rate of 63.2 percent, unemployment at 5.8 percent, more than 21 billion euros in tax cuts, exports up 2.7 percent over 2022-2025 and past the 643 billion euro mark, and the spread between Italian and German bond yields down below 80 basis points.

That last figure is more interesting than all the others put together. The yield spread is the price the market charges for risk - the smaller it is, the less investors fear that something will fall apart. Italy paid a premium for decades precisely because of political instability.

What is not on the list

Anniversary press releases as a rule leave out the defeats. The judicial reform fell at a referendum in March. The constitutional reform that was meant to change how the prime minister is chosen did not pass. So the two most ambitious projects of this government did not go through - and the record still stands.

That is the point worth pulling out. Longevity and success are not the same thing. Meloni's government survived not because it achieved all its goals, but because it did not collapse - which in Italian conditions is a skill in its own right.

Here governments usually see out their terms, so longevity surprises nobody. But the question that is rarely asked is the same one as in Rome - what has actually been built once you clear away the press releases about success? Stability is a condition for work, not a substitute for it.

Meloni gets the record, that is beyond dispute. Whether she also gets a legacy is an entirely different question, and a rally in Bari will not answer it.