In Western democracies today, political communication is increasingly adopting a new brand. ‘Cakeism’ is the belief that it is possible to enjoy or take advantage of both of two desirable but mutually exclusive alternatives at once. It usually characterises the discourse of populist parties that exploited the electorate’s anger about their politicians’ inability to improve their lives. However, mainstream parties are also more likely to promise the electorate that they can indeed have their cake and eat it. Big servings of cakeism have dominated the recent UK leadership election and the current Italian general election campaign. The Italian private TV news station SkyTG24 conducted an interesting analysis of what the Italian parties are promising the electorate and how they intend to finance these promises. The centre-right coalition, expected to win the election on Sunday, has made 40 promises on public expenditure but only three commitments on how to fund them. The centre-left grouping led by the Partito Democratico made 66 public expenditure promises, with only four indications of how these will be financed. As predictable as heatwaves in August, all parties have a blanket...