If I was Alexis Tsipras, I would be looking to seek asylum somewhere a long way from Greece because all the signs are that he is about to do a deal that will represent a major sell out. And what is worse for Greeks is that the deal he is about to accept could be even worse than the one he rejected just a few weeks ago, a deal which was emphatically rejected in last week’s referendum.
Tsipras was elected on a mandate to end austerity, nothing more and nothing less, but after five months of posing and posturing that has left the Greek economy in an even bigger mess than before, the alternative to austerity will be more of it.
I am no economist, but I do believe those like Larry Elliott from the Guardian who say that this third bail out will not succeed anymore than the first two. Any move to growth will be strangled by further pension and wage cuts and rises in VAT. How long until there is a fourth bail out, then a fifth and sixth? Greece’s debts represent 175% of GDP and the economy is now 25% smaller than it was at the financial crash. Over 50% of 18-24s are unemployed, Greece is in free fall. This is expensive sticking plaster that we know will not work.
We’ve been fooled – well, I have, at least – by another Trot bearing empty rhetoric and false slogans. I should have known better. I agreed with the premise of stopping the rot for all the reasons listed above. The Greek debt mountain is not going to disappear by adding to it and that appears to be the only deal on the table from the European top table which these days seems to comprise Merkel and anyone who agrees with her.
If Tsipras waves the white flag this weekend, everything that happened would be in vain. The hope of Syriza in place of the corruption and incompetence of the past dashed in a matter of five miserable months in which Tsipras has been found out. It turned out that there was no grand design, no strategy; nothing beyond sabre-rattling. The thought that he was some kind of strategic genius has been laid to waste.
And what are the Greeks to make of it all? The major parties of the past reduced to rubble and the party of hope and an alternative to austerity was all wind and piss. We hope that somehow a political figure of real substance will come and rescue the country from the abyss, but we fear that the door is open for even more extremism, but this time from the right and anything would be preferable to that.
