Greeks just want to keep what they’ve got

We were breakfasting outside on the morning of the Greek referendum. The result could only be guessed at and all the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. I thought ‘yes’ would win because surely Greek people believe in membership of the EU. Our friend Marie, however, who is French, announced that it would be a decisive ‘no’. Marie is neither a left-winger nor a Europhobe. ‘Why?’ her husband asked, ‘how do you know?’

‘Avantage acquis,’ she said. Few of us were fluent French speakers, but I made a guess: ‘You mean people’s sense of continuing entitlement to something they have already got?’ Yes, she said, such things are very hard to take away. So though we had agreed that the Greek electorate were being obstinate and irrational about hanging on to pensions, perks, jobs and salaries that had been funded by mounting national debt, that (said Marie) was just how most people are. It wasn’t a wrongheadedness peculiar to Greeks. It was the way people — all people — think. There arises in minds and hearts a presumption that what you’ve always had is rightfully yours. Reason alone, however compelling, can be powerless against that instinct. You don’t feel you’re being selfish. Custom, practice and long-standing possession become a moral argument in themselves.

Now in a sense this is obvious, and well-known in politics. That is why our government would never alter the pension age for people already receiving a pension. It is why, when they take away (as eventually they must) some of the silly benefits available to rich pensioners — heating allowances, free public transport, no prescription charges and the like — they will have to announce the change so far in advance that the first cohort to be affected will hardly yet have begun to think those benefits theirs.

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It is why, too, when it becomes absolutely unavoidable that an avantage acquis be withdrawn, the group who are singled out must not be not too numerous, or popular, or sympathetically regarded by others.