Greece Is A Lesson For The Labour Party: You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It

Telegraph(UK) ^ | July 11, 2015

[Steelfish]

Greece Is A Lesson For The Labour Party: You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Syriza’s rabble rousers have woken up to reality – now it’s time for the British Left to do the same

Janet Daley 11 Jul 2015

The rock star revolutionaries of Greece spent months winding up their febrile population with uncompromising oratory, denunciation of their infamous creditors and bloodcurdling threats to the stability of the eurozone. Then they called a snap referendum on an unintelligible question, which they won with a resounding majority: an outcome that was universally interpreted as a national repudiation of austerity.

And then they caved.

They are now offering the aforementioned demonic creditors pretty much everything (and, some say, a bit more) than they originally demanded. What just happened? The most obvious answer: reality happened. Whatever it was that the Greeks said “no” to in that bizarre referendum, one thing has always been clear. They would – given the chance – say a definitive “no” to the question “Do you want to leave (or be ejected from) the euro?” They would also, presumably, have been infuriated to discover that the government to which they had given such a handsome mandate was not able to deliver the impossible dream promised: Greece could not, after all, have its cake and eat it.

[Hodar]

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money." Margaret Thatcher