A lot of hot air is being said about the likelihood of Greece defaulting on its troika debt, but like most things, there are very few facts.
Greece, a nation of just over 11m people out of a total EU population of about 500m, accounts for just under 2 per cent of the eurozone GDP.
By rights Greece, an effective middle-ranking nation on the fringes of southern Europe, should not be a member of the EU. But we are where we are.
Germany, on the other hand, cannot play hard ball with southern Europe with its guilt trip over the excesses of the Weimar Republic and the subsequent events leading up to World War Two.
The truth is that Germany’s economic strength has been built in large part on the very southern European economies it now despises – piling up debt buying high-quality Germany goods on the never, never.
Of course, George Osborne has a right to dip his oar in the EU mess since it is Britain’s biggest trading partner. But that is not enough. The eurozone has a right to settle its own disputes among members.
What is concerning about the Greece debate, especially about so-called Grexit, is the one-dimensionality of the discourse.
Truth be told, the real damage from a Greece exit of the eurozone is the obvious damage it will do to the euro project, but it will not be a death knell.
As the home of modern European civilisation, the Greeks have a legitimate right to fight back against the attempt to humiliate them on the spurious grounds of economic austerity.
Economics is not the only measure of progress and although wealthy Greeks are as much to blame as the Germans for the nation’s predicament – tax cheats and the transfer of massive wealth overseas – ordinary people have a right to decide their own priorities.
About 27 per cent of adult Greeks are unemployed and the number of those aged between 16 and 24 out of work, education and training has long passed the 50 per cent mark; this is not the way to build a modern European nation.
We only have to look at Japan to see how the multi-dimensionality of nationhood plays out.
Despite the demographic timebomb, the Japanese still refuse to allow in younger, working age foreigners to settle permanently in their country on the grounds that it will be storing up social problems for future generations.
The fly in the ointment is the US, issuing instructions to Greece and the EC on how they should behave.
There is an element of bullying surrounding the plight of the Greeks and they either have to bite the bullet or cave in to the pressure.
