THE EU NEEDS TO GET REAL AND IGNORE THE BOLLOCKS PUT OUT BY BRUSSELS-AM-BERLIN
Every day another German, Dutch, French or Belgian nitwit talks of “lots more work to do”, “some progress”, “intensive talks” and alleged Greek perfidy. Even Merkel was at it today. But the truth remains that five years of austerity have left the Greeks in no mood to compromise….as a new poll out today confirms in spades.
Earlier this week, one of the most trusted of the Hellenic pollsters, Macedonia University, carried out a large-scale voting study to check on the state of play among the Greek electorate. It represents very cold comfort indeed for Troika 2.
* Syriza is more than twice as big as any other party. It would get 36.5% of the vote, to a dwindling 15.5% for Nia Demokratia. Just so we have a parallel here, on almost exactly the same vote, the UK Conservative Party now has a clear majority. Before the EU/EC/ECB bullies lost their senses, Syriza had just 5.5% of the popular Greek vote.
* With a personal positive rating of 36%, Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras has a rating nearly three times that of Nia Demokratia. Seven times more Greeks are very positive about Tsipras compared to the meagre 2% who feel the same about ND leader Antonis Samaras.
* Although To Potami (‘the River’) has a mere 6% of the votes, its leader Stavros Theodorakis gets a 21% favourability rating. This is to be expected (he is a well-known TV journalist) but his popularity and pro-EU stance makes him very de rigueur with the Troikanauts in Brussels and the CIA-State Department axis that runs Washington foreign policy. (I am reliably informed by an Athens student body, however, that his real ‘raison d’etre’, as a way to ease Syriza out of total power, is something of an open secret among the educated young).
* Just 1 Greek in a hundred has a very positive view of Evangelos Venizelos. So add this to the 2% feeling very positive about the olive-stone megabrain from Kalamata, and it becomes clear just how representative of Greek aspirations the previous Troika1 negotiators were.
The rumour that those very favourable towards Venizelos include his mum, his priest, 6 chauffeurs, 4 chefs, 44 yacht crew and 73 restaurateurs has been hotly denied by PASOK’s media centre.They insisted this afternoon that a total staff of 272 constantly required suit-alteration tailors are also devoted to Big Benny, and would continue to be so.
Earlier at The Slog: Is anyone beyond Pluto the Dog editing the Telegraph?
The Slog 