Diary – 19 November 2011

Athens

The manner in which George Papandreou was ousted has shocked Greeks. ‘It’s a foreign invasion, a takeover, only without tanks’, says Calchas, an angry young man whom I find marching around Syntagma Square in front of the Greek parliament, with 100 or so others, all clutching rolled-up red flags. Other marchers mutter about ‘neo-colonialism’. They have a point. The ultimatum issued to Papandreou by Brussels bigwigs was extraordinary. After he made the fatal error of suggesting that the EU austerity package ought to be put to a referendum, Papandreou was told that he should step aside and allow the emergence of a ‘unity’ government whose purpose would be to implement EU measures. Nothing terrifies the EU elite more than the thought of hoi polloi having a say on its policies, so the €8 billion aid tranche that Greece needs was made contingent on the formation of this government of nodding dogs. ‘Brussels’ bitches,’ Calchas says.

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The coup d’état of 1967 led to a military dictatorship lasting until 1974, known as The Seven Years or The Regime of the Colonels. The coup d’EU has given rise to The 100 Days (the amount of time the unelected government of national unity will last) or what we might call The Regime of the Technocrats. Everyone has heard of the new PM, Lucas Papademos, but no one here really knows who he is. This isn’t all that surprising, considering he has never once stood for election. Instead he has spent his life as a high-flying banker, including eight years as vice-president of the European Central Bank (ECB). Imagine if tomorrow morning you woke up to discover that David Cameron had been chucked out of Downing Street and replaced by Mervyn King, or perhaps Fred Goodwin, issuing lofty decrees about how we must all tighten our belts.