Let Greece go

The campaign to keep Greece in the euro has resulted in five years of groundhog days. The unfortunate country seems to be forever approaching a day of repayments it cannot afford. Ministers and diplomats assemble to thrash out a deal. Meetings collapse in bad temper, and markets sink. Then, at the eleventh hour, a deal is somehow forged. Greece agrees to reforms which seek to cut spending and balance the books in return for billions of pounds of bailout cash. Markets rebound. The money is paid, the debt repayments met. And then all starts to go wrong again. A few months later we are back where we began.

Anyone who hoped the election of Greece’s Syriza government in January would break the cycle has been disappointed. All that has happened is that tempers have worsened as the unpayable bills have grown larger. The new Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, this week rounded on Greece’s creditors, accusing them of somehow ‘pillaging’ the country in their expectations of repayment.