Since the start of 2015, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has won two general elections, a national referendum and signed a new bailout deal packed with austerity. In so doing, he has managed to jettison the extreme left of his party and with it his own hard left politics. He has gone from being the eurozone’s bogeyman to Angela Merkel’s darling; from being a continental nuisance to a (slightly reluctant) partner. Much of it was forced upon him. He took on the eurozone. He lost. Still, not bad for just under a year’s work.
A new Tsipras does seem to have emerged. The Economist recently reported that Tsipras had spent the summer at a shipping magnate’s villa and enrolled his son in one of Greece’s most exclusive private schools. As a result some in the blogosphere have suggested that he is coming to resemble a Greek Tony Blair.
But there is more than enjoying the hospitality of oligarchs to the Blair analogy. After all, Blair dragged the Labour Party, a former socialist movement, to the political centre, abolishing some of its more controversial polices, notably Clause 4, which, in calling for “the common ownership of the means of production” hampered the party’s appeal to middle class voters. Like Blair once did, Tsipras has managed, in the space of just over nine months no less, to move Syriza closer to the political centre.
Tsipras is a lifelong political activist. He started in student politics and worked his way steadily onto the national scene. He was always on the far left. He was always strident. But he had another marked quality, too. A family friend, a former academic at the National Technical University of Athens, dealt with Tsipras when the latter was the student representative on the university senate. Tsipras, he said, unyieldingly supported student causes, but never did anything to directly harm the university’s interests. The same characteristic was shown in his eventual decision to yield to Greece’s lenders. The alternative option, Grexit, was just too damaging a prospect for the country. He moved further to the centre. He backed down.
As Dimitrios Triantaphyllou, a Greek political analyst at Kadir Has University who has followed the rise of Tsipras, notes, “the Blair analogy is very apropos when it comes to Tsipras, who seems to be evolving into a power broker who understands that the only way to keep himself and his political platform in power is by transforming it into a mass party of the centre left.”
But to transition, even to the centre left, requires yet one more evolution, and Tsipras has to ensure he is able to remain in power to complete it. The process has begun. The radical left broke from Syriza in protest at Tsipras’ signing of the latest bailout package to form its own party. But it failed to gain even the required threshold to enter parliament at last month’s general election.
Rid of the extreme left, Tsipras now has the option of working with more democratic forces in parliament. Pasok, the Union of Centrists, and Potami are all potential partners that could help shift the mainstream of Greek politics to the centre left. He remains the most popular politician in the country by some distance (in July he had an approval rating of over 60 percent). As Triantaphyllou observes, “should he manage to keep Syriza together while implementing the bailout package his chances of ideologically distancing himself from some of Syriza's more radical beliefs are very good.”
But to become the leader of a truly centre-left party that Greek voters accept—to become Greece’s Blair—Tsipras needs to convince them that the harsh medicine they will receive over the coming year is worth the cost, convince his own party that staying in the EU is in Greece’s interests, and continue to negotiate with his country’s creditors to soften the austerity measures as much as possible. It won’t be easy. He may have won the September general election, but voter turnout was very low (in fact the lowest ever recorded) at 55 percent. The signal was clear enough: Greeks gave Tsipras the win, but grudgingly so.
And even with the hard left gone, many within his party retain a steadfast adherence to extreme politics. The battle within Syriza is not yet over. And, as Triantaphyllou points out, it is a battle not merely about the latest bailout’s implementation, but rather about competing visions of Greece. This much-needed transition towards the centre implies “moving away from the Greek exceptionalism that unfortunately both the Foreign Minister, Nikos Kotzias; the Alternate Foreign Minister, Nikos Xidakis, and the Defense Minister, Panos Kammenos seem to favour—[especially as regards] a pro-Russia policy.” Defence and foreign policy are serious portfolios. Both are now in the hands of men who see Greece as less of an EU country than an independent "exceptional" one—bounded neither to east nor west.
Tsipras himself seems to have made up his mind that the West, and the EU, is the way to go. He has abandoned much of the pro-Putin rhetoric of his early days in power and recently met with US Secretary of State John Kerry in New York to discuss issues ranging from Europe’s refugee crisis to energy. Nothing concrete was agreed. But the two sides are talking. The further he continues along this course the greater the chance of an ineluctable collusion with Xidakis and Kammenos, two of his most senior cabinet ministers. So far, both have remained onboard the Syriza transition. But this is Greek politics: drastic change can come overnight.
Critically, any decisive pivot away from Moscow will involve energy. Tsipras's recent talks with Kerry at the UN touched on the possibility of Greece becoming an “energy hub” in the Mediterranean, circumventing the need for Russian pipelines to pump gas into the region. Up for discussion was the construction of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline and the Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria, which would help to diversify gas supplies to south eastern Europe, away from Russia’s Gazprom. If he can achieve this it would be a clear sign to Moscow that Greece has unequivocally chosen West over East.
This is a thankless enough task in itself. But he also has to cope a with a refugee crisis of global proportions that is engulfing the country. In this sense, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent entry into the Syrian civil war is likely to worsen matters. Moscow will drop more bombs. More Syrians will wash up in Greece.
Tsipras know this. And he knows that his country is on the front line of this particular crisis. “We do not believe that the future of Europe can be built on ever higher walls, with children dying at our doorsteps,” he said at the UN last week.
Nonetheless, he is unlikely to tackle Putin directly on this issue, but one thing is for sure, it won’t bind him any closer to Russia, which is yet another problem. Moscow remains an important player for Greece, in everything from trade to the perennial problem of Cyprus. Tsipras has twice visited Russia for talks with Putin. But the Russian President would clearly have preferred a Grexit and the disruption to the EU that would have brought over Tsipras’ capitulation. For the moment, the relationship is warm. But Tsipras unequivocally chose the EU. Chalk that up as loss for the Kremlin. How relations between the two countries will progress depends on just how far Tsipras has decided to hitch his ideological horse to the European Dream.
What Greece needs now more than ever is stability. And Tsipras seems to understand this fact, which is both to his credit and to the benefit of his country. The challenges facing him are colossal. But if he can overcome them he may indeed prove to be Greece’s Tony Blair. Large parts of Greek society could benefit from the type of centre left policies that benefitted so many of Britain’s poorest. And, lacking Blair’s appetite for foreign adventures, a Blairite Tsipras could be just what the Greek people need.
