Switch over to the Greek debt drama: the final episode must be coming shortly

Bored with the election? Switch over to the Greek debt drama. In this week’s cliffhanger, silver-tongued finance minister Yanis Varoufakis visited IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Sunday, promised to meet his country’s obligations ‘ad infinitum’, and was expected to meet a €450 million repayment to the IMF on Thursday. But more troublesome members of the ruling Syriza party denounced the IMF and Brussels for treating Greece as ‘a colony’, threatening a snap election ‘if creditors insist on an inflexible line’, and warning that public-sector salaries and social security payments must rank ahead of debt as cash runs out.

Which it will before August. Greece’s tax collections are so feeble, its ability to re-finance maturing public debt so perilous, its commitment to reform so unconvincing and outflows of funds from its banks so torrential that the likelihood of avoiding default — and possibly chaotic exit from the euro — is rapidly vanishing. Even if a last tranche of bailout money is finally released, relief will only be temporary. If the crisis doesn’t arrive when the next IMF instalment (€771 million) falls due on 12 May, it must surely come when more than €2 billion is demanded between 5 June and 13 July. That danger period could coincide with our own market turmoil following a Miliband-Sturgeon pact to ‘lock David Cameron out of Downing Street’. The two dramas will intertwine, and we’ll be watching disaster on every channel.

Meanwhile, prime minister Alexis Tsipras was in Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin, supposedly to discuss easing restrictions on Russian imports of Greek produce imposed in response to EU sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine — but also to remind western powers that other allegiances are possible. So far there’s no suggestion of Russian financial support for Syriza — but Putin could at least offer Tsipras a parable of how to be a responsible international borrower even when the world seems to be against you.