Greece

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 July 2015

Home In his Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, slowed the planned rate of bringing in £12 billion of welfare cuts. He forecast a surplus by 2020. The bank levy would be reduced but a surcharge on bank profits imposed. The total of benefits that a family can claim a year would be cut to £23,000 in London and £20,000 outside it. Tax credits for those with more than two children were to be reduced. Local authority and housing association tenants in England who earn more than £30,000 (£40,000 in London) would have to pay more rent. Maintenance grants for students would be turned into loans. Income tax

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Have the Greeks just blinked?

The Syriza-led Greek government has just submitted a new set of proposals to their creditors. It appears to shift Greece closer to the creditors on VAT and pensions reform. It is also, as many have been quick to point out, really quite similar to the proposal that the Greeks voted against in last Sunday’s referendum. Indeed, it doesn’t even appear to contain any demand for debt relief for Greece. The Greek proposal has been drawn up with French assistance, the New York Times is reporting, which suggests that Paris should be sympathetic to the proposals. The question then is how the Northern European countries, led by Germany, react to it?

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Left-wing Eurosceptics are finally starting to reveal themselves

Even if everything goes wronger still, the Greek No vote is a great victory for the left. Until now, the left has not mounted a serious challenge to the claims of the EU. It is extraordinary how it has been cowed. The single currency, especially a single currency without a ‘social dimension’ and political union, is the classic ‘bankers’ ramp’ against which the left always used to inveigh. It is a huge collective device to put banks before workers, if necessary reducing the latter to poverty. Greece is an almost perfect example of this, with the rescue designed to save European banks, not Greek people. More than a quarter of

Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

‘Banging on about Europe’ doesn’t seem so dumb now, does it?

As we watch the Eurozone catastrophe enter its latest ‘final phase’ one phrase keeps recurring to me.  That phrase is ‘banging on about Europe’.  Does anybody else remember when those words were used (at least since Maastricht I think) to dismiss absolutely anybody who was worried about the overreach or mismanagement of the whole EU project?  Europhiles from the three main parties loved the phrase.  Whenever they wanted to portray a political opponent as a tedious, fringe obsessive the words sprung to their lips.  For instance, whenever he wanted to paint the Tory party as a right bunch of nutters, Nick Clegg would portray them as the type of bores who

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Good and bad politics: the Budget against a backdrop of Greek chaos

George Osborne’s Budget was good politics: not so much in terms of tactical point-scoring, though there was plenty, but in terms of striving for big objectives of fiscal rectitude and wider prosperity by incentivising sensible economic behaviour and discouraging casual reliance on the state: ‘a country that backs those that work hard and do the right thing’, in David Cameron’s phrase. Some of it will provoke rage, some of it will swiftly unravel, but it was a real attempt to steer the UK in a positive direction. How sad that it had to be presented against the backdrop of the Greek crisis, which is the most howling concatenation of bad

Ramita Navai

Ali Baba and the 300 hostages

In the heat of the midday sun, the fields and woodlands between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia look idyllic: birds sing, the grass is smudged with wild poppies, all seems quiet. But this picture of pastoral peace is, I’m afraid, an illusion. This is Greece’s Wild West, a lawless and desperate place known as ‘The Jungle’, where people are beaten up every day. ‘It’s dangerous out there,’ says the fat Greek policeman standing with me, just north of the village of Idomeni. Then he waddles back to his car. The predators in this jungle are Afghan people-smugglers, their prey the poor migrants who have struggled here from all over

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Forget the EU – we need the Hanseatic League

I think it is time to put into effect my plan for the re-shaping of the European Union. A somewhat scaled-down European Union: Greece wouldn’t be in it, for a start. Nor Portugal or Spain or France or indeed Italy south of a line which I have just drawn on my Times Atlas of the World in felt-tip pen, stretching east north east from Genoa to Trieste. And even that northern bit of Italy (Venice in, Bologna definitely out) is there on a sort of probation — and on the understanding that they take their orders from the German-speakers in the new capital Bolzano (or Bozen, as it will become

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Remember when Britain could build stuff?

Heathrow. The whole British story is there. Reading up around that debacle last week, I came across the eye-watering — and I think true — claim that, over the course of the second world war, Britain built 444 airfields. Four hundred and forty four. Although not all in the United Kingdom, probably. Some will have been in far-off lands, where Johnny Foreigner could be bought off in exchange for a pretty goat, or just shouted at, at gunpoint, until he went away. Hundreds, though, will have been here, on British soil — where it has now taken us over half an actual century to not quite build a new runway

Tom Holland

The glory that was Greece

Financial crises are nothing new in Greece. Back in 354 BC, at a time when Frankfurt was still a swamp, the Athenian general Xenophon wrote a briefing paper designed to help his city negotiate the aftermath of a disastrous war. His proposals mixed supply-side reform with Keynesian stimulus. The regulatory powers of Athenian officials, so Xenophon suggested, should be streamlined and enhanced; simultaneously, the city should invest in increasing its commercial and housing stock. The economy, boosted by these measures, would also benefit from encouraging foreign investment. ‘Imports and exports, sales, rents and customs’: all would then surely flourish. Traditionally, the reputation of classical Greece among economists has tended to

Wednesday

Steerpike

Paul Mason calls Syriza critic a ‘Nazi collaborator’

Covering the Greece crisis appears to be beginning to take its toll on Paul Mason. Channel 4’s economics editor became embroiled in a bizarre Twitter rant last night during which he accused an anonymous blogger of being a ‘Nazi supporter’ over their criticism of the Syriza government. The comments were made during a heated discussion between Mason and the blogger @GreekAnalyst. A tweet criticising the Syriza government’s strategy appeared to rattle Mason, who appears to be unimpressed by Germany’s negotiations with Greece following the referendum. Mason expressed his frustration by using a Greek word to insult the user, who runs an anonymous blog strongly opposing the Syriza government: @GreekAnalyst thankfully the Greek people have more courage than your dwindling band

Tuesday

Matthew Parris

You’ll never understand Greece from a God’s eye view

We were breakfasting outside on the morning of the Greek referendum. The result could only be guessed at and all the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. I thought ‘yes’ would win because surely Greek people believe in membership of the EU. Our friend Marie, however, who is French, announced that it would be a decisive ‘no’. Marie is neither a left-winger nor a Europhobe. ‘Why?’ her husband asked, ‘how do you know?’ ‘Avantage acquis,’ she said. Few of us were fluent French speakers, but I made a guess: ‘You mean people’s sense of continuing entitlement to something they have already got?’ Yes, she said, such things are very hard

Steerpike Steerpike

Crowdfunding campaign to bail out Greece fails to meet its target

After the people of Greece voted against the bailout terms on offer in Sunday’s referendum, the likelihood of the country staying in the Euro is beginning to diminish. Now, they have received yet another blow. A crowdfunder campaign, started by Londoner Thom Feeney to raise the full €1,600,000,000 needed, has been closed down after failing to meet its target. The IndieGoGo fundraiser claimed that since ‘all this dithering over Greece is getting boring’ it was time to forget the European ministers working on deals and instead let ‘the people just sort it instead’. Alas, it seems out of the 503 million people across Europe, only a small percentage wanted to take part.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Greeks haven’t exactly got negotiations off to a good start

Eurozone leaders are holding a summit later today to discuss the Greeks’ proposal for dealing with their debt that was to be put before the Eurogroup this afternoon. But that summit might be a tad short. The Greeks haven’t turned up with any new ideas. They have instead made an oral presentation, and may table a paper tomorrow. If this is true, then it hardly gets the new negotiations off to a good start. It had looked yesterday as though Syriza was keen to give it another shot by removing Yanis Varoufakis as finance minister at the behest of the Eurogroup, but on his first full day in the job,

Monday

James Forsyth

Merkel strikes an uncompromising tone as the ECB tightens the squeeze on the Greek banks

François Hollande and Angela Merkel have both given brief statements to the media ahead of their dinner this evening. Hollande was keen to stress that the door remained open to Greece for negotiations and struck a generally more emollient tone. Merkel, though, did not sound so emollient. She claimed that the deal that the Greeks rejected was ‘quite a generous one’. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank—the key actors in this drama—have kept the emergency lending assistance they are offering the Greek banks at the same level. This means that the Greek banks will not be able to re-open. The ECB has also said that it will ‘adjust the haircuts on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Time running out for a Greek deal warns Osborne

Right now, Britain is sitting on the side-lines waiting to see if there is, to use George Osborne’s phrase, an ‘11th hour’ deal between Greece and the rest of the Eurozone. Britain isn’t part of the Greek bailout or the Eurozone so is peripheral to this process; David Cameron isn’t invited to the emergency Eurozone meeting on Tuesday. But Osborne has just told the House of Commons that the UK government expects the Eurogroup to discuss a new proposal from the Greek government at tomorrow’s meeting. As Osborne pointed out, the problem is that the political timetable for a deal isn’t moving as fast as the financial timetable in Greece.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cheer up! The Greek crisis shows you were right all along

I don’t know whether the joy on the right was worse than the preening on the left last night but as the result of the Greek referendum swept across social media I found myself thinking that any result so cheerfully welcomed by Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn and Sinn Fein can’t be thought altogether cheerful. Of course you needn’t judge a cause by its followers but when a cause is followed and endorsed by such a collection of rogues, crooks and cranks it’s wise to begin to wonder about it. All this glee seemed especially shabby since, really, it didn’t really seem to be about Greece at all.

Fredrik Erixon

Greece has chosen to inflict heavy economic damage on itself

The Greek referendum will change nothing. Greek voters already expressed their great dissatisfaction with the bailout packages when they elected Syriza to power in January. The proposition they were asked to vote about now does not exist – and the referendum was just a sham. The bailout agreement that Greece and its creditors battled over for the past half-year is a dead parrot; it has ceased to exist. And yet the referendum result may change everything. It has made it close to impossible for euro governments to aid Greece with more money. While other leaders can backpedal their statements in the past week that the Greek referendum was really about its

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis resigns

If Greece had voted ‘Yes’ to the austerity package proposed by its creditors, then there would have been a round of resignations at the top of Syriza. But this morning, even though the party is celebrating a ‘No’ vote, its finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has resigned. Writing on his blog, he explains that in order for the country to get a good deal that it can accept, he needs to let someone else take over: ‘Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister

Sunday

James Forsyth

Greece says No, will Germany now try and kick it out of the Euro?

Greece has voted No in the referendum and resoundingly so. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, No is leading 61% to 39%. The result is a massive humiliation for Eurozone leaders who have spent the last few days telling the Greeks to vote Yes and warning them that this was really a referendum on whether the country should stay in the single currency or not. Tonight, Syriza have been making clear that the Greek government intends to remain within the Euro. However, the German government is making clear that it is not interested in further negotiations with Athens or a new bailout deal. Sigmar Gabriel, the deputy

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

Alexis Tsipras asked if people were happy. The answer was always going to be ‘no’

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has just done something unthinkable. He has won the Greek referendum. And make no mistake, it was him that won it. It was his decision to call a referendum just over a week ago and send the EU into a panic. The last Prime Minister to try that was George Papandreou in 2011 before he was forced to backtrack rapidly. He resigned shortly after. But winning the referendum isn’t what is so astounding – opinion polls were neck and neck throughout last week and once voting closed at 7pm Greek time it became almost immediately apparent that the No side would win. What makes his feat so