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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (right) welcomes the German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a welcome ceremony in Athens
AUTHORITIES banned demonstrations and locked down central Athens, closing off streets and shuttering underground stations today as German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew in for talks with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
Thousands of police officers were deployed and police helicopters and drones were due to patrol the skies until Ms Merkel’s departure, with Greece’s Syriza government fearing unrest because of Germany’s association with the three infamous “memoranda” — formally “economic adjustment packages” — that saw Greece sell off its public assets, slash pay and pensions and remove collective bargaining rights from workers in return for “bailouts” that gave its government money to repay international creditors.
Though the memoranda were officially the work of the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, Germany was instrumental in drawing up the terms and took a more inflexible stance than other EU countries or the IMF over debt relief and required spending reductions.
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Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT
RON JACOBS welcomes a book that tells the story of the far right in Greece from the perspective of migrants