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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| Alexis Tsipras’s mixed messages over appointing me as finance minister | Alexis Tsipras’s mixed messages over appointing me as finance minister |
| (6 months later) | |
| Letters | |
| Mon 24 Jul 2017 13.36 BST | |
| Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 19.38 GMT | |
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| In a Guardian interview (‘What nobody believed could happen, will now happen: we’ll take Greece out of crisis’, 24 July), the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, having admitted to “big mistakes”, was asked if appointing me as his first finance minister was one of them. According to the interviewer, Mr Tsipras said “Varoufakis … was the right choice for an initial strategy of ‘collision politics’, but he dismisses the plan he presented had Greece been forced to make the dramatic move to a new currency as ‘so vague, it wasn’t worth talking about’”. | In a Guardian interview (‘What nobody believed could happen, will now happen: we’ll take Greece out of crisis’, 24 July), the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, having admitted to “big mistakes”, was asked if appointing me as his first finance minister was one of them. According to the interviewer, Mr Tsipras said “Varoufakis … was the right choice for an initial strategy of ‘collision politics’, but he dismisses the plan he presented had Greece been forced to make the dramatic move to a new currency as ‘so vague, it wasn’t worth talking about’”. |
| Given that I presented my plans to Mr Tsipras for deterring the troika’s aggression and responding to a potential impasse (and any move by the troika to evict Greece from the eurozone) before we won the election of January 2015, and I was chosen by him as finance minister (one presumes) on the basis of their merit, his answer reflects a deep incoherence. | Given that I presented my plans to Mr Tsipras for deterring the troika’s aggression and responding to a potential impasse (and any move by the troika to evict Greece from the eurozone) before we won the election of January 2015, and I was chosen by him as finance minister (one presumes) on the basis of their merit, his answer reflects a deep incoherence. |
| Either I was the right choice to spearhead the “collision” with the troika of Greece’s lenders because my plans were convincing, or my plans were not convincing and, thus, I was the wrong choice as his first finance minister. | Either I was the right choice to spearhead the “collision” with the troika of Greece’s lenders because my plans were convincing, or my plans were not convincing and, thus, I was the wrong choice as his first finance minister. |
| Arguing, as Mr Tsipras does, that I was both the right choice for the initial confrontation and that my plan B was so vague it wasn’t worth the trouble of even talking about is disingenuous, albeit insightful, for it reveals the impossibility of maintaining a radical critique of his predecessors while adopting the Tina (There Is No Alternative) doctrine. | Arguing, as Mr Tsipras does, that I was both the right choice for the initial confrontation and that my plan B was so vague it wasn’t worth the trouble of even talking about is disingenuous, albeit insightful, for it reveals the impossibility of maintaining a radical critique of his predecessors while adopting the Tina (There Is No Alternative) doctrine. |
| As my account of the events of 2015 is on the record (see my recent book, Adults in the Room), I wish to add nothing further here about that period. What matters now is the task of ending Greece’s desertification, which is proceeding at a harrowing pace under the provisions of the third bailout, its new unsustainable loans and its growth-debilitating, self-reinforcing and self-defeating austerity. Is playing “model prisoner” to our lenders a better plan than the one Mr Tsipras dismisses as “weak and ineffective”? That is the question.Yanis VaroufakisAthens | As my account of the events of 2015 is on the record (see my recent book, Adults in the Room), I wish to add nothing further here about that period. What matters now is the task of ending Greece’s desertification, which is proceeding at a harrowing pace under the provisions of the third bailout, its new unsustainable loans and its growth-debilitating, self-reinforcing and self-defeating austerity. Is playing “model prisoner” to our lenders a better plan than the one Mr Tsipras dismisses as “weak and ineffective”? That is the question.Yanis VaroufakisAthens |
| • Larry Elliott (Opinion, 21 July) shares the Trot fantasy of Corbyn and McDonnell that there is some kind of socialist international paradise awaiting outside the EU. Where? Cuba, Venezuela, Russia? Those who claim to be on the left who voted Brexit should be held to account for their failure to support socialists in Italy, France, and Germany and for not fighting for a socialist policy of transferring wealth from the north to the south and states such as Greece. They gave licence to racism and the rise of populism and semi-fascism in Europe, and should not be forgiven for their cynical motives.Dr Stephen DorrilHuddersfield | • Larry Elliott (Opinion, 21 July) shares the Trot fantasy of Corbyn and McDonnell that there is some kind of socialist international paradise awaiting outside the EU. Where? Cuba, Venezuela, Russia? Those who claim to be on the left who voted Brexit should be held to account for their failure to support socialists in Italy, France, and Germany and for not fighting for a socialist policy of transferring wealth from the north to the south and states such as Greece. They gave licence to racism and the rise of populism and semi-fascism in Europe, and should not be forgiven for their cynical motives.Dr Stephen DorrilHuddersfield |
| • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com | • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com |
| • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters | • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters |
| Yanis Varoufakis | |
| Eurozone crisis | |
| Greece | |
| Europe | |
| Alexis Tsipras | |
| European Union | |
| letters | |
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