It was the unswayability of the left vote that put Alexis Tsipras straight back into the prime ministerial mansion he resigned from a month ago, calling a snap election.
The levels of economic pain and dysfunctional borrowing set to be inflicted on Greece mean that at some point public opinion will flip.
The level of pressure that’s being exerted on Syriza right now, I don’t think is enough to derail a deal from below.
The country will divide: right versus left – as it has been divided since British tanks rolled into Syntagma Square in 1944 to install former Nazi collaborators into office.
They came, they saw, they had – as one Syriza MP put it to me last night – “their balls handed to them”. For all the smiling and calm displayed by Alexis Tsipras, the Greeks know they came off the worst.
It’s the meeting that had to happen. A radical left-wing Greek prime minister and a centre-right German chancellor whose ministers have been urging her to throw Greece out of the eurozone.
There is a sea change going on within Syriza. I’ve heard people who were staunch believers in a euro that can accommodate by negotiation a radical left government say, effectively, they were wrong.
The far left Syriza party wins 149 seats out of 300 in the Greek parliament. What this means is that the EU/IMF strategy for dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 crisis is in tatters.
The exit polls put the far-left party Syriza on track to win the Greek election. If the predictions hold this is an earthquake: for Greece, for the eurozone and for centrist politics.
Paul Mason continues his series of explaining the workings behind the Greek elections, and why it matters so much to us. Here he explains the eight parties all hoping to get into parliament.