Observer
November 6, 2011
No Greek will forget the image of our defeated prime minister standing alone before a gaggle of reporters outside the G20 conference hall in the Cannes night. The German chancellor and French president had just taken turns telling the world that Greece was a step away from being ejected from the eurozone. In the remake of Cinderella, the grim-faced sisters had won.
Two years after his election and the revelation of the depth of Greece's debt, two years after introducing painful reforms that successive governments had avoided, George Papandreou had made the fatally mistimed blunder of thinking he should ask his people how much more pain they were prepared to take (thereby shaking confidence in the EU's efforts to prevent the Greek contagion). Here, besides the collapse of the fairy tale that being part of the EU is an endless ball, was the essence of Greece's modern tragedy. Papandreou, in his moment of despair, represented both good intentions undone by personal failings, and the insular political elite whose weaknesses brought Greece to the terrifying brink of bankruptcy and isolation.
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