Greece’s motorcycling Marxist, Alexis Tsipras, makes an unlikely champion, with his commuter leathers and largely unrealistic Left-wing views, but he seems to be about the best of a bad bunch right now. As far as I can see, he’s the only member of the Greek political class who makes any kind of sense, albeit only marginally so and with one rather important deficiency.
Rightly, he’s rejected Berlin’s austerity programme as “barbaric” and counter-productive (though, incongruously, he rides to parliament on a German-made BMW), but he’s not yet managed to reconcile himself to the logical corollary of this analysis – that Greece must take back control of its own destiny by leaving the euro. As it is, the economy is condemned only to permanent depression.
