It was the unswayability of the left vote that put Alexis Tsipras straight back into the prime ministerial mansion he resigned from a month ago, calling a snap election.
Alex Thomson
Juncker and Merkel saying early today they are confident Athens will do as it is told and as its own leader has negotiated, but the scale of the Greek PM’s U-turn remains breath-taking.
Jonathan Rugman
If Angela Merkel has her way, the euphoria in Athens about Sunday’s referendum result will prove short lived. There is a discernible hardening of attitudes in Berlin.
While the proposal has caused outrage among the Greek conservatives and outrage among Syriza’s left-wing voters, the real problem is bigger.
The level of pressure that’s being exerted on Syriza right now, I don’t think is enough to derail a deal from below.
The country will divide: right versus left – as it has been divided since British tanks rolled into Syntagma Square in 1944 to install former Nazi collaborators into office.
The Greek crisis ramped up a gear last night when, at the start of supposed “last chance” talks in Brussels, EU negotiators told the Greek delegation that “negotiations were over”.
While Tsipras, Varoufakis and their negotiators have been trying to get the country’s debt reduced via the IMF and ECB, Zoe Konstantopoulou has been working to get it declared invalid.
Running short of cash to pay public sector salaries, pensions and debt obligations, Greece’s Syriza has laid out what it will and will not negotiate with its creditors, but will it be enough?
After a weekend of leak and counter-leak, today has seen another dramatic development: the leak to a newspaper of the European Commission’s proposal to break the Greece logjam.
After a frantic weekend the Greek government sought to break the deadlock in its talks with lenders today by reshuffling its negotiating team.
While the Riga Eurogroup meeting on Friday is not the last chance Greece has to be rescued, it is probably the last chance for it to achieve a result outside of crisis measures.
Negotiations over a new bailout for Greece are approaching a critical stage. And if the country runs out of cash, it might just feel like the end of the world for many Greeks.
The European deal done six days ago was supposed to stabilise the Greek debt crisis. But the situation in Greece is still critical.
Instead of “we were kicked out”, it would be sold as “we escaped” – and I think however positively today’s deal is spun, the push for Grexit will grow stronger as constraints become obvious.