Be Afraid, Very Afraid,
Yanis Varoufakis the former Greek finance minister was in London last week with some sage advice for the new Labour leadership.
Speaking at a meeting of the 'People's Assembly' in London Varoufakis (who lasted less than six months in his job before being sacked by the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras) said:
"Your opponents, Diane, Jeremy, John, are going to use fear as their main instrument. They will say to you that a Corbyn government will push up the pound. This is what the systemic media will tell people in their living rooms."
"Don't fear them. People are perfectly capable of sifting through this. The people can overcome fear if the leadership overcomes fear."
Now exactly what this all means is far from clear, although I do seem to recall that the student politics of the Syriza-led government have managed to leave Greece in a even worse position than that which existed before Syriza came to power.
Never Ending Party (17/02/15)
Yanis Varoufakis is clearly enjoying his new found fame as the Greek Government's finance minister which is not surpassing since he was until recently teaching at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs in Austin, Texas.
I was struck by his directness in answer to the question about how Greece was behaving before the financial crash where he admits that life was one big, never ending party.
Yet in his very next answer to the people's mindset 'after the crash' he resorts to meaningless words and gobbledegook while shying away from the obvious point - that Greece is really the architect of its own misfortune.
So while reasonable people are willing to help Greece recover from its present predicament, I suspect a little humility would go a long way in bringing about the right kind of mood music.
Yanis Varoufakis: In his own words
By Russell Hotten - BBC Business reporter
Yanis Varoufakis met UK Chancellor George Osborne on Monday
With his open-neck shirt hanging outside his trousers and long black overcoat, Yanis Varoufakis could pass for an ageing rock star.
Greece's new finance minister is on a European tour, arguing the case for a debt write-off. For Europe's highly-polished political and financial elite, the 53-year-old 'libertarian Marxist' has been a culture shock.
Not for him the guarded, diplomatic-speak that politicians are used to. Here's a selection of his opinions.
On the austerity terms of Greece's €240bn bailout
"Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders... What we've been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that has turned this nation into a debt colony."
Varoufakis wants to stay in the eurozone
"Greece is absolutely, irreversibly, committed to staying in the eurozone," he told CNN. "The problem is that once you're in, it goes just like the Eagle's song 'Hotel California' - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
His view on the 'troika' - the EU, IMF, and ECB - that arranged Greece's bailout
"A committee built on rotten foundations."
On being accused by a European finance minister of "killing" the troika by not talking to them
"Wow!"
With his open-neck shirt hanging outside his trousers and long black overcoat, Yanis Varoufakis could pass for an ageing rock star.
Greece's new finance minister is on a European tour, arguing the case for a debt write-off. For Europe's highly-polished political and financial elite, the 53-year-old 'libertarian Marxist' has been a culture shock.
Not for him the guarded, diplomatic-speak that politicians are used to. Here's a selection of his opinions.
On the austerity terms of Greece's €240bn bailout
"Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders... What we've been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that has turned this nation into a debt colony."
Varoufakis wants to stay in the eurozone
"Greece is absolutely, irreversibly, committed to staying in the eurozone," he told CNN. "The problem is that once you're in, it goes just like the Eagle's song 'Hotel California' - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
His view on the 'troika' - the EU, IMF, and ECB - that arranged Greece's bailout
"A committee built on rotten foundations."
On being accused by a European finance minister of "killing" the troika by not talking to them
"Wow!"
Varoufakis held talks with French finance minister Michel Sapin on Sunday as part of his whistlestop tour
On the different treatment of bankrupt banks and bankrupt states
"Quite remarkably, while the insolvent states are visited upon by stern IMF and EU officials, are constantly reviled by the 'serious' press for their 'profligacy' and 'wayward' fiscal stance, the banks go on receiving ECB liquidity and state funding (plus guarantees) with no strings attached. No memoranda, no conditionalities, nothing."
He wants a deal with hedge funds, bankers and the establishment. But...
"Forging alliances with reactionary forces, as I think we should do to stabilise Europe today, brings us up against the risk of becoming co-opted, of shedding our radicalism through the warm glow of having 'arrived' in the corridors of power."
Poet Dylan Thomas was his inspiration after Syriza won Greece's general election
"Greek democracy today chose to stop going gently into the night. Greek democracy resolved to rage against the dying of the light."
To the wealthy and political elite that he says ran Greece
"We are going to destroy," he told Channel 4 News "the basis upon which they have built for decade after decade a system, a network that viciously sucks the energy and the economic power from everybody else in society."
On the different treatment of bankrupt banks and bankrupt states
"Quite remarkably, while the insolvent states are visited upon by stern IMF and EU officials, are constantly reviled by the 'serious' press for their 'profligacy' and 'wayward' fiscal stance, the banks go on receiving ECB liquidity and state funding (plus guarantees) with no strings attached. No memoranda, no conditionalities, nothing."
He wants a deal with hedge funds, bankers and the establishment. But...
"Forging alliances with reactionary forces, as I think we should do to stabilise Europe today, brings us up against the risk of becoming co-opted, of shedding our radicalism through the warm glow of having 'arrived' in the corridors of power."
Poet Dylan Thomas was his inspiration after Syriza won Greece's general election
"Greek democracy today chose to stop going gently into the night. Greek democracy resolved to rage against the dying of the light."
To the wealthy and political elite that he says ran Greece
"We are going to destroy," he told Channel 4 News "the basis upon which they have built for decade after decade a system, a network that viciously sucks the energy and the economic power from everybody else in society."
He studied economics and maths in the UK in the 1970s and 80s
"I found it [economics] such a morose subject, so bonecrushingly boring, so much reliant on third rate mathematics. Why study inane metamorphoses of third-rate mathematics when I could study first-rate, aesthetically pleasing, ideologically unproblematic, mathematics? So, I immediately transferred to the School of Mathematics."
Varoufakis taught at Sydney University, where he was no fan of Australia's prime minister John Howard
"That awful little man."
On Karl Marx
"In truth, Karl Marx was responsible for framing my perspective of the world we live in, from my childhood to this day. It is not something that I volunteer to talk about in 'polite society' much these days because the very mention of the M-word switches audiences off."
Varoufakis has spoken of his unease about his new-found fame
On Margaret Thatcher's legacy
"All that sprang out of Thatcherism were the spivs, extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and… Tony Blair."
Before the financial crash, Greeks thought the party would never end
"The average Greek had convinced herself that Greece was superb. Uber alles. A cut above the rest. That we had made it into Europe's hard core but that we were even better than the austere Germans, the snobbish French, the bubbly Italians, the stiff-upper-lip Brits. Due to our exceptional 'cunning', Greece was managing to combine fun, sun, xenychti (late nights) and the highest GDP growth in Europe."
And after the crash?
"Self-immolation followed self-congratulation, but left self-importance in the driving seat."
He loves the BBC - well, most of the time
"As a fan of the BBC, I must say I was appalled by the depths of inaccuracy in the reporting underpinning this interview (not to mention the presenter's considerable rudeness). Still, and despite the cold wind on that balcony, it was fun!"
On Margaret Thatcher's legacy
"All that sprang out of Thatcherism were the spivs, extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and… Tony Blair."
Before the financial crash, Greeks thought the party would never end
"The average Greek had convinced herself that Greece was superb. Uber alles. A cut above the rest. That we had made it into Europe's hard core but that we were even better than the austere Germans, the snobbish French, the bubbly Italians, the stiff-upper-lip Brits. Due to our exceptional 'cunning', Greece was managing to combine fun, sun, xenychti (late nights) and the highest GDP growth in Europe."
And after the crash?
"Self-immolation followed self-congratulation, but left self-importance in the driving seat."
He loves the BBC - well, most of the time
"As a fan of the BBC, I must say I was appalled by the depths of inaccuracy in the reporting underpinning this interview (not to mention the presenter's considerable rudeness). Still, and despite the cold wind on that balcony, it was fun!"
The meeting with Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem was reportedly tense
On worries about his elevation from university professor to politician
"I know that I run the risk of, surreptitiously... indulging a feeling of having become 'agreeable' to the circles of 'polite society'. The sense of self-satisfaction from being feted by the high and mighty did begin, on occasion, to creep up on me. And what a non-radical, ugly, corruptive and corrosive sense it was!"
And when did he first notice that "corruptive" influence?
"My personal nadir came at an airport. Some moneyed outfit had invited me to give a keynote on the European crisis and had forked out the ludicrous sum necessary to buy me a first class ticket. On my way back home, tired and already with several flights under my belt, I was making my way past the long queue of economy passengers, to get to my gate. Suddenly I noticed, with considerable horror, how easy it was for my mind to be infected with the sense that I was 'entitled' to bypass the hoi polloi. I realised how readily I could forget that which my left-wing mind had always known: that nothing succeeds in reproducing itself better than a false sense of entitlement."
On calls that he must now stop writing his widely-followed blog
"Naturally, my blog posts will become more infrequent and shorter. But I do hope they compensate with juicier views, comments and insights."
On worries about his elevation from university professor to politician
"I know that I run the risk of, surreptitiously... indulging a feeling of having become 'agreeable' to the circles of 'polite society'. The sense of self-satisfaction from being feted by the high and mighty did begin, on occasion, to creep up on me. And what a non-radical, ugly, corruptive and corrosive sense it was!"
And when did he first notice that "corruptive" influence?
"My personal nadir came at an airport. Some moneyed outfit had invited me to give a keynote on the European crisis and had forked out the ludicrous sum necessary to buy me a first class ticket. On my way back home, tired and already with several flights under my belt, I was making my way past the long queue of economy passengers, to get to my gate. Suddenly I noticed, with considerable horror, how easy it was for my mind to be infected with the sense that I was 'entitled' to bypass the hoi polloi. I realised how readily I could forget that which my left-wing mind had always known: that nothing succeeds in reproducing itself better than a false sense of entitlement."
On calls that he must now stop writing his widely-followed blog
"Naturally, my blog posts will become more infrequent and shorter. But I do hope they compensate with juicier views, comments and insights."
Voldemort v Varoufakis (10/03/15)
'Kitchengate' (16/03/15)
Marina Hyde writing in The Guardian takes aim at politicians including Ed Miliband who are desperate for the kind of toe curling photo-shoot which led to the Labour leader being pictured having a nice cup of tea in the second kitchen of his London home.
The only saving grace is that Ed didn't make as big a fool of himself as Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, whose country may going to the dogs but he at least has time to pose for some delightful shots 'at home' in Athens although his city centre pad (with the Parthenon in the background) looks pretty swish to me and not in the least austere.
