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 remarkable is that he was able – by virtue of proposing a referendum with a deliberately unclear question – to ask the Greek people some very simple questions to which the answer was always going to be No.
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