The radical Greek economist recalls how his polemic on the forces driving Europe apart turned in to real political life and made him finance minister Writing a book should be a life-changing experience for its author. This book was no exception: it was as if, halfway through writing it, the subject matter jumped off the page and demanded a real-life response. I soon found myself in the belly of the beast I had been writing about. I started researching and writing And the Weak Suffer What They Must? in response to a series of questions. Why is the European Union disintegrating (Brexit being the first symptom of its malaise)? Why is Europe so clearly failing to emulate the US, which also began life as a loose confederacy of fractious states before consolidating magnificently in response to its various existential crises? Varoufakis seems to largely absolve the corruption and political incompetence that led to the problems facing his own country – some of which, such as tax collection, are being tackled to an extent post-crisis. And he has the usual misty-eyed conservatism of the far left in much analysis of recent economic history. Yet he is right to point out that valid questions of sovereignty lie at the heart of Europe. And to argue that the euro was flawed by failing to unite politics and fiscal policy with monetary strategy, that German intransigence on debt has damaged the wider project and, above all, that Greece is being crushed by its rigid and ever-tightening financial straitjacket. Varoufakis – an admirer of John Maynard Keynes – sees the euro as the gold standard reborn, designed to unify nations but driving them apart by widening living standards in different parts of the continent. Britain, he argues, had a lucky escape. IAN BIRRELL Continue reading...
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