A remarkable shortage of logic in the homeland of logic
After the Greek vote in which Turkeys delivered a shock vote against Christmas and Eurozone leaders gave Greece until Sunday to come up with a solution to their debt problem, I remain baffled by the fact that so many people in Greece both want their country to remain in the Eurozone but also want a totally different economic policy to that of the European Central Bank."
I can understand why someone who believes that Greece needs a strong dose of financial discipline might want to remain in the Eurozone.
I can understand why supporters of "an end to Austerity" and radical left-wing policies might want to see a managed and negotiated Greek Exit from the single currency.
And of course, there are probably millions of Greeks who take one of these internally consistent positions
But the fact that large majorities in Greece both oppose the policies of the European Central Bank but also support continued membership of a system which means that the ECB will control their country's currency and interest rates - and this from the country where logic was invented - indicates a catastrophic failure of intellectual consistency on the part of those Greeks who are part of both those majorities.
This is a cognitive dissonance beside which the people who told pollsters in Britain that they wanted and expected David Cameron to remain Prime Minister but that they wanted and expected a Labour government pales into insignificance.
It is about as rational as the old joke about the political party manifesto which promised legislation to guarantee every citizen an above-average standard of living.
You cannot share the same currency without at least a substantial convergence of economic policy.
This is of course, one of the main reasons that I and many of those like me who campaigned to keep the pound, did not want Britain to join the Euro.
Goodness knows that the ECB and Eurozone leadership have made mistakes and I would not necessarily agree with everything they have suggested for Greece.
But it is a fundamental misreading of the situation to suggest that the Eurozone are recommending austerity and severe measures to Greece because they want to "punish" Greece or the Tsipras administration or like suffering for the sake of it, or even that they are trying to impose from outside an overall policy envelope different to what they want for themselves.
The ECB and Eurozone leaders have pushed the measures they recommended to Greece because they believe that a policy of balancing the books is necessary to protect the interests of the Eurozone as a whole including their own countries, and you cannot operate a currency union in which some of the members are following one economic policy and others are following a totally different one.
I can understand why someone who believes that Greece needs a strong dose of financial discipline might want to remain in the Eurozone.
I can understand why supporters of "an end to Austerity" and radical left-wing policies might want to see a managed and negotiated Greek Exit from the single currency.
And of course, there are probably millions of Greeks who take one of these internally consistent positions
But the fact that large majorities in Greece both oppose the policies of the European Central Bank but also support continued membership of a system which means that the ECB will control their country's currency and interest rates - and this from the country where logic was invented - indicates a catastrophic failure of intellectual consistency on the part of those Greeks who are part of both those majorities.
This is a cognitive dissonance beside which the people who told pollsters in Britain that they wanted and expected David Cameron to remain Prime Minister but that they wanted and expected a Labour government pales into insignificance.
It is about as rational as the old joke about the political party manifesto which promised legislation to guarantee every citizen an above-average standard of living.
You cannot share the same currency without at least a substantial convergence of economic policy.
This is of course, one of the main reasons that I and many of those like me who campaigned to keep the pound, did not want Britain to join the Euro.
Goodness knows that the ECB and Eurozone leadership have made mistakes and I would not necessarily agree with everything they have suggested for Greece.
But it is a fundamental misreading of the situation to suggest that the Eurozone are recommending austerity and severe measures to Greece because they want to "punish" Greece or the Tsipras administration or like suffering for the sake of it, or even that they are trying to impose from outside an overall policy envelope different to what they want for themselves.
The ECB and Eurozone leaders have pushed the measures they recommended to Greece because they believe that a policy of balancing the books is necessary to protect the interests of the Eurozone as a whole including their own countries, and you cannot operate a currency union in which some of the members are following one economic policy and others are following a totally different one.
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