Refusing to write off part of Greece’s debt makes a default almost inevitable – Angela Merkel, the woman with the cheque book, must be more imaginativeIt didn’t take long for Greece’s radical new government to fall off the front pages in head-in-sand Britain. But don’t worry, it will be back. It’s not impossible to see how Alexis Tsipras’s anti-austerity mandate from his battered electorate can be used to benefit us all. But it’s much easier to see how a mismanaged showdown between Brussels, Athens and (especially) Berlin could make a bad situation worse.Judging by Ed Miliband’s arms-length response to Syriza’s striking victory in Sunday’s election (“It’s up to each country to choose its own path,” he said), the Labour leader is aware of the risks both to Europe and to his own electoral prospects if things quickly go pear-shaped for the Tsipras team. Scary thought, the new cabinet is full of clever academics, some trained at Essex University, others political novice. Not “tainted by experience”, as the old joke goes. Continue reading...
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