Syriza should insist on a Greek referendum

THE essence of classical narratives is that everyone knows what will happen next. They have heard it before or experienced it. The joy - the pain, too - lies in revisiting the familiar.

The Greek debt-and-austerity negotiations are going according to a plan already foreseen. When George Papandreou was prime minister, he was stumbling through the beginning of the Greeks' confrontation with their own profligacy. In 2011, he wanted to fight the troika - the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central bank - and thought he could hold a referendum and ask the citizens for their views. Alas, he was intimidated into cancelling that plan by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. He obeyed the German and French leaders' wishes. That destroyed his credibility and his party's electoral prospects.

Here we go again, with left-wing Syriza now in control. Promises are easy to make in opposition. You can promise the skies. Then you come down to earth when you get power and realise its limitations.