Greek parties welcome a deal over International Monetary Fund

Greek parties confirmed a deal allows the eurozone policymakers, the International Monetary Fund and the government of Athens to keep talking next week which may considered as the first stage in a clampdown on anti-austerity sentiment.

A lot of issues became very clear after the statements coming out of Brussels, not least those from Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s veteran finance minister, who indulged himself with some patronising comments to show where the power lies, he said with a smile” Being in government is a date with reality, and reality is often not as nice as a dream.”

Generally, Greece has many enemies inside the eurozone, the countries that have suffered Brussels-inspired austerity and those that have played a role in enforcing it, we mean here the Germans, Dutch and Finns, all want the radical leftwing Syriza led government in Athens to stick with the programme.

For the right-of-centre parties that control Portugal, Ireland and probably more importantly Spain the need to keep Greece in check is driven by domestic politics. Any sense that austerity was ever wrong or that it delayed the recovery, as Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis argues, would undermine their authority and hand the intellectual higher ground to rival parties.

However, Varoufakis’s first demand for a debt writedown was dismissed and his attempt to get a bridging loan was totally refused. Decisions to suspend privatisations also frowned on,so he have to use all available money to support Greek banks.