THE EURO

The Establishment Greek Parties weren’t the only ones who took a severe beating in the Greek elections. Britain’s Murdoch title The Sunday Times talked of ‘Parties opposed to austerity likely to win about 30% of the vote’. They actually got nearly 50%. The BBC declared the Syriza share ‘a big surprise’ – which shows Auntie doesn’t read The Slog – and Bloomberg on Saturday forecast ‘a 45% share of the vote for PASOK and New Democracy combined’. They got 32.3% – exactly what The Slog posted they would get last night. My forecasts in red plus the actual results in black are listed below:

                  New Democracy  18.8%                            19.2
SYRIZA – left – 15.2%                              16.6%
PASOK – 13.5%                                          13.4%

Independent Greeks – right – 12.1%      10.5%
KKE – communist – 9.3%                               8.4%

DHMAR – leftish – 7.8%                                   6.1%
Golden Dawn – fascist – 5.8%                  6.9%

They’re more or less spot-on, with the exception of Golden Dawn, whose support rose above DHMAR’s. Extreme Right-Wing Party support is often underclaimed in poll research, given that many voters are sheepish about admitting they will vote for such organisations. However, the truly big surprise of the night was the turnout – which The Slog and everyone else got badly wrong: 82% projected, 65% actually turned out in the end.

That last finding is far from academic. It is perfectly logical to propose that one third of the electorate is now so alienated from Greek/EU politics, they abstained, while a further 48.5% actively voted anti-bailout. As The Slog suggested throughout last week, it is a crushing defeat for Brussels and Berlin. (Or, as they will see it, “The Greek people have made a terrible mistake”).

So, what happens now? Almost everything depends on Antonis Samaras: if he lives up to his rhetoric of two months ago about the “mad” demands of the Troika, then things will turn very nasty very quickly. That is to say, with its 50-seat boost, even without the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, Samaras would enjoy a 50-seat majority in the legislature – with 118 seats against, only 41 of which are pro-bailout. To get his allies on board, however, he would have to promise to dump the bailout terms.

The more cynical end of Greek opinion thinks he won’t do that. A much ‘safer’ (in eurozone terms) alliance would be between ND, Pasok (social democrat) and DHMR (liberal) with 169 seats between them. The danger (in internal Greek terms) of that would be a far more united anti-Troika Opposition with 131 seats. It would produce less stable government – and it would also, of course, be a complete rejection of the will of the Greek electorate. No prizes for guessing which option the Troika/Schäuble axis will start pushing.

But there remains the as yet unclear intentions of Washington. A Greek Government toeing the Troika line would be much safer for the Black Dude in an election year. The Americans will therefore probably do nothing. But there remains (in both the Pentagon and the CIA) a more gung-ho tendency who want Greece under their control for longer-term geopolitical reasons.

And close friend of Recep Erdogan, David Cameron? He’ll be glued to the live coverage of the Leveson Enquiry.