The Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has spent his short time in office pursuing a financial settlement for his embattled country. It is therefore disappointing to hear him tell parliament that the real negotiations are only now beginning.
If the theatrics of the past half year were merely a warm-up, they have not been without cost. The Greek economy is weaker, and its financial position more imperilled, than when Mr Tsipras’s Syriza party came to power.
Worse, clumsy negotiation by Mr Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis, his finance minister, has blown their meagre stock of political goodwill to no apparent end. Greece was not friendless six months ago: there was considerable sympathy for Syriza’s critique of the austerity programme. This has now been supplanted by exasperation. Formerly friendly voices now muse openly about how Europe can happily tolerate Greece leaving the euro.