The Greek Elections: an avoidable defeat for the left
The results of Sunday’s Greek Election called after the ruling Syriza Party trailed in the recent European Elections (Theresa May please note) have delivered a victory for the right-wing New Democracy Party which was booted out of Office in 2015.
The turn-out at under 60% was low but it appears that the Nazi Golden Dawn party didn’t quite get to the 3% threshold to be represented in Parliament. The unqualified good news ends there, although the election of 9 MPs from the leftist MeRA25 party led by Yanis Varoufakis will no doubt be watched with interest.
Others can tell the history much better than me but Greece, after it joined the EU in a probably ill-advised move faced financial crisis.
The traditional parties of the right-New Democracy- and the left, PASOK, were in crisis.
A new left party Syriza committed to opposing austerity and disengaging with the EU was elected.
Before long however its leadership under Tsipras was advocating an arrangement- a bailout- with the EU and the IMF. 25 Syriza MPs walked out in August 2015.
Even so Tsipras continued to manage austerity and cuts dictated by the EU until now.
Unsurprisingly a rather alienated electorate has decided that if the future is austerity you might as well have the official austerity party managing it. Of course the left will continue to fight austerity and the battles of the last few years will have produced a layer of people well equipped to do so.
However the point for UK politics is perhaps that if you are elected to fight austerity but instead try to come to terms with it you open the door to a new right, let alone the impact on your working-class supporters.
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