 What I'm going to do more than anything else is where my political hat is former Secretary General of a general secretary of a political party, which I was for nearly 13 years, during which time I was also a member of two houses of the Oroctus and served the party executive and simultaneously the parliamentary party. So very much the spoiler at the center of the web. Because this is a political problem, as you've heard, and I completely agree with it. This is not a banking problem. This is a public finances problem. And every public finances problem is essentially a political problem. So that's where we're looking at the politics of Greece from this particular hat. I'm starting with the party system. What struck me more forcibly than I would have expected is the fact that it's a two-party system and they're almost of equal size now as a result of evolution since the collapse of the dictatorship. But what also struck me is that there are more than political parties. There are more like mass movements. They both tell you that the membership is 800,000. They tell you very proudly. And that a huge student membership as well of the order of 40,000 to 50,000 in each case. It reminded me very much of mass movements in the 19th century and not least here in this country, say under O'Connell and under Parnell. I think it's worth reflecting on that a two-party system is unusual in Europe. It is, of course, it is a feature such as in Malta. But the multi-party system is the norm. For example, what Brian Ferrell, the first director general here, used to describe as the two-and-a-half party system most predominant in Ireland. That half-party makes all the difference, such as in the federal public in Germany until quite recently, the role of the liberal party as the half-party. What it does do is it makes coalitions possible with one party or the other. The two-party system are both of equal size and what's in the middle doesn't really matter. You've got an absolute confrontation. Oppositional politics. And that makes consensus extremely difficult to develop because you're obviously going completely and utterly wrong. And I'm completely and utterly and absolutely right. And the government of national unity, which is probably required, is, as a consequence, almost impossible. Now, there was an attempt, which was referred to while we were there, to create a government of national unity. I think the conversations lasted one evening, and that was the end of that. Sorry. But I would like to classify this as almost a perpetual civil war. And it struck me that it's almost like von Klauswitz in reverse, as you remember. He said that war was the continuation of politics by no other means. But I think in Greece, it can be truly said that politics is the continuation of war by other means. And my feeling about the thing is that, quite literally, you are entering a political war zone. It's very reminiscent, I would have thought, for the Irish people of the politics here of the 20s, even up to about the 50s, where the two civil war sides were entrenched in utter and absolute opposition with each other. It's not the basis of a long-term solution, not least, if you take into account this particular, Shanukh al-Asqir, and in Yarkakorla Keila, there is no strength until there is a coming together, literally, literal translation. As a result of this cleavage between the two sides, to use that political science term, the competition between the two parties is utterly and absolutely intense. The winner takes all, quite literally all. And if you're on the losing side, you're out. Now, what numbers of people are we talking about? About 100,000 people lose their jobs. And 100,000 people come in and get the jobs that the 100,000 people just have had. So, and a senior politician is now out of the frame completely, if you're in opposition. Which means, therefore, that the swing vote between the two is, certainly, an absolutely decisive. What we're talking about, about 7%, 8% of the electorate. So, therefore, you're going to get this pendulum politics that Tony and Willie, Tony and Noel, mentioned about this alternating system. And I think that's a feature of the operation of the swing vote. How do you get the swing vote? Well, of course, it's irresponsible politics. What you do is you buy the vote. And you promise lower taxes and higher spending. A disaster is formula. I remember going into Rome about 10 years ago or more. Whenever Perlusconi was just about to come into power, it was about a week before the election. And there's no posters in Rome, but there are large billboards, as you know. And everywhere he went, in a way, almost a thousand of these billboards, everywhere, Perlusconi's face, and the campaign slogan. Meno tassi perturti, less taxes for everybody. You can't lose on that. It was done before, I think, in 1977 here, this country as well. But the results of that promising, that lower taxes and higher spending is, of course, that you get unsustainable debt. Sorry, we're out of sequence here at the moment. Anyway, look, what you get is, the point is you get unsustainable public deficits. As Tony said, those were massed by EU transfers plus artificially high growth as a function of an insured economy. And the result of all that, you've got a real problem. Now, the two parties, as has been said, but worth a point, just again emphasizing very briefly, are coalitions. They're not actually parties. That's the other point I would want to make. When you get this party that has a 45% vote, it really is internally a coalition. But they're big coalitions. There's a new democracy coming out of the monarchist and conservative tradition, and PASOC out of the Republican and radical tradition. Now, let's not go too far about these titles. There's a lot more to it than that. But these are the broad labels that would actually fit. And both fairly recently formed, and that's the point that they are relatively new as parties, but they're mass movements. And they are also dynastic in the sense that Papangio is the son of a prime minister who was the son of a prime minister. And Karaman Lease was the son of a prime minister. And the current finance minister comes out of this famous family whose name is seen all over the place because the Athens airport is called after that family. And it is strongly fractional. But this is the point about a big party. It's a nightmare for a general secretary, I can tell you that. We were a small party, and we had air of factions. But because it's so new, and because it's this big broad coalition, it is actually weakly organized as a party. This is not something that you can wheel around. The party leadership can wheel it around 180 degrees, just like that overnight. The dream of all party apparatus, of course. You cannot do that. And both parties, interestingly, recognize that they need party reform. In addition to all the reform agenda that Nile talked about, the political parties recognize that they need their own specific reform program, which is to decouple the party from personal dynasties. The question is, will the parties survive after Papangio and the disappearance of the Karaman Lease faction? I don't think that you can underestimate the influence of history. It's been mentioned before, and I make no apology for repeating it. I think Greece has had a very unfortunate and unlucky history. Centuries of occupation under the Ottomans. I mean century, back to millennium, almost. And interference, remember everybody since from 1830 by Britain, by France, of course, as always the case, by Germany, and naturally given the region, Russia. It is the product, what Greece is today, originally was conceived by these four great powers and they bear a lot of responsibility for some of the inherent problems that Greece suffers from even to today. There has been the mention of the defeat by Turkey just after the First World War, but what has to be emphasized is the huge social dislocation that has caused the movement of one and a half million refugees into Greece. And the legacy that that leaves inside the Greek DNA is profoundly strong, and it explains why it is that they have a defense budget that's way beyond their capacity to finance a 4% of GDP, where the average inside the EU is 2% or even much lower. There has been mention as well as about the terrible civil war and the German occupation and the fact that there were 500,000 deaths in that period that's quite recent. And also the fact that there was famine. It's important to know the recall of people died on the streets of Athens from famine in my lifetime. So these things have gone very deep into the DNA just to make the point that then you had this military dictatorship, which was an appalling one. When I first met George Papandreou's father, then later the prime minister, Andreas Papandreou, which I worked, he was in exile, living in Europe elsewhere in exile and trying to drum up support for Greek democracy and not always very successfully. So it has left a legacy of hatred. You could argue that modern Greece has really only been born in 1980. Now, that's an interesting proposition. It's what we're thinking about. I certainly believe this to be the case. As a society, I think there's very strong arguments that it's a pre-industrial society. We three and four didn't always agree with this. I also called it a pre-modern state. My colleagues didn't argue with me strongly about this one, but I believe it to be the case. And of course, it has no parliamentary traditions, which has been mentioned, and it has also got other problems, such as weak state institutions. Those features have been addressed before. They affect the political culture. Clientalism is always an index of poverty on the one hand. Something more is an index that you're not a citizen. This is the Ottoman tradition. You're not a citizen. When you go before the public service, you're a client, looking for a favor from the civil servant on the other side. And frequently, I've got a Greece's PAM to do so, or her PAM. So you've also got patronage in such a culture on a massive scale that's been mentioned. And also, I think that Greeks will constantly refer to themselves as widespread corruption that goes through all levels of the system, including up to the very top. And at the moment, one of the boiling points with a lot of people is one particular individual who people believe was the recipient of very large sums of money, about tens of millions. Tax evasion has been referred to as a way of life. And one of the great reforms that's got to be brought in is literally put in a tax collection system that functions. The interesting thing the current government is actually putting in a system which prevents the tax collectors from meeting the public face-to-face. Why? Because a deal is done in the face-to-face collection. It's like that parable of the gospel, sit down quickly. How much do you owe me? 100. Sit down quickly and write 10. You remember that parable? And then, of course, if you don't do the deal with a tax collector, you appeal and you go to the court. Now you do a deal with the judge. And I'm not inventing this. This is, unfortunately, the way it is. The bloated public service has been referred to. Yeah, and all the difficulties that Nile has mentioned and those factions. These were other things that would strike you very strongly. Of course, Greek culture has a very strong streak of individualism, and why not? But the history that it does have. But it means also that there's weak communal identity. And there is a weak civil society. In fact, it's practically a non-existence civil society. This was an unexpected feature, was the insistence of a lot of people whom we met and said, really, well, what is it to be Greek? I mean, do we have this nationality, apart from the football team, and maybe some basketball? The language, sure, and a certain history. But the sense of identity that we Irish would have, I would think, as being Irish and as belonging to a national community, did not seem to be at least at the same level. And this leads to then a conflict between self-interest and national interest. Very much evident from people from whom this should not be expected or tolerated or permitted, a dedicated middle class. You've got protected professions who are fighting like hell to keep what it is they have. Economists would call this rent-seeking. And isn't it interesting that there's always the same professions who feature in an IMF plan? Always the lawyers. Always the lawyers. They're very busy writing letters at the moment. Always the lawyers. And pharmacists. Why pharmacists? We've got graphic stories about pharmacists who apparently closed every Monday afternoon, every Wednesday afternoon, and every Saturday and every Sunday. Now, this is interesting. Think about it. The weak social ethic, which is one of the ingredients that Aristotle says in politics as masterly work, says there's got to be a strong social ethic, because what you need is stability in a society. No matter whether it's the democracy or an oligarchy or even a dictatorship, there's no social ethic really evident. Just an impression of what struck me about the self-absorption of the Greeks with our own issues. So the last 30 years, they've basically not reformed themselves. What are they doing? Fighting in this perpetual civil war that I mentioned. And who came back to me was Churchill. And Churchill's reference to Fairmana and the dreary steeples of Fairmana, that when the rest of Europe would have sorted out its problems, who would be fighting still are good friends in Northern Ireland. Absorbed with each other with these historic conflicts. We're going to be chairman, not to say. OK. And finish off, I just put up a couple of questions here, which you can think about. The social contract really has broken down now in Greece. That's why there's people out on the streets. That's why there's the loss of legitimacy, there's public anger, and there's street violence. The question is, does Greece have the capacity to do two things or three things, overcome the crisis, remain a member of the Euro, survive in the long term, and contribute to the European project? These are difficulties that had to be overcome, as Nile has mentioned, a huge reform agenda. A strong political leadership that's isolated and also the state capacity to deliver. There is no sense of responsibility for the crisis. Nobody created this, and nobody is responsible for it. And nobody really has an agreed framework of analysis. And most of those should be helping in opposition. The second last bullet point was repeated to us repeatedly. There's no ownership of the solution. There's no buy-in. And if that is not the case, then you've got real problems. The political leadership is operating off a terribly narrow base, both within the zone party and within the parliament and within the public. It's open to ambush. It's certainly open to an ambush internally in the parliamentary party. The last vote, they lost yet another MP, the five to go, and we're all in deep trouble we're in a red zone. There's doubts over the ability, government's ability to run the full term. That's been constantly said to us. And the feeling of insecurity in the future and a lot of writing on Pap and Jail. Say, but the public service, Nile has dealt with this at great length. It's unreformed as the critical point and it reminded me very much, having written a history of the Irish civil service in the 18th century under the old Irish parliament, it very much reminds me of that civil service. The consequences, which the OECD made the point that there's no neutral civil service. There's no neutral state, as it were, in the top of which it doesn't have the capacity to act effectively anyway. So, if you go into reform, it brings me back to juvenile. You remember juvenile is the great Roman satirist, also very cruel and wiffy with his whip, but he asked the famous question, who will guard the guardians? Which sometimes is wrongly translated as who will judge the judges? The problem is, who's going to reform the reformers? Well, where are you gonna start? And there's no skills, as Nile mentioned, to reform the civil service. And the fundamental, I think, task is to reform the culture. I think they're the ingredients that we need. I agree completely and utterly and absolutely with Tony and Nile about the US-EU-style martial plan. The economy, Tony has dealt with it, and Nile has dealt with it, is not the engine. And does it have the capacity to contribute to the overall policy I'll finish on this? Yes, the cosmopolitan elite. It does have an institutional framework. It does have a cadre of administrations who can do it. And it's an intelligentsia, which is an important point amongst the best in the world. Look, we've all known this was a problem. 30 years ago, as Tony has said, nothing to do with it. Nothing was done about it. But is the failure of Greece gonna lead to a failure of the Euro? And does the failure of the Euro lead to the failure of the EU? In which case, we should try and save it. Ireland is a possible temple, but forget it. The political challenges are this. The first two quotations come from a dear friend of mine who entertained us to dinner, George Stavopoulos. You don't mind me quoting him. He said, we cannot do this on our own. We must be made to do it. Please don't let up the pressure. Now, this is from a man who's on my own age and has seen it all happening and who's now passionately angry, not least about his children's prospects and grandchildren. So it's political will and state capacity. And the question is, how do we sustain the first and build the second? Maybe we need formal political criteria for Euro membership upon coming out of Tony's paper. At the moment, we've got intrusive interference now in the internal affairs of one member state and that is Italy. So is this going to be the norm? And everybody is, who's going to act? Is it other member states? Council, the commission, the parliament? What do we do if we intrusive interference and the state doesn't match up? It's a failed political entity of a very borrowable phrase. Do we need political equivalence of domestic trading? The economic criteria is the EU heading for a direct war. Every time I see Merkel, Chancellor Merkel and President Sakhozib going in together, holding hands and coming, I see what Gareth Fitzgerald was always afraid of ultimately and that was an EU direct war. I think it's now a reality. So finish, Greece can't do it on its own. It's a pre-modern society. I think saving Greece is worthwhile. It's an act of solidarity for everything else. But what it is now, putting on the agenda, is new thinking about European integration and new EU is emerging and modern Greece has been built for the first time. Thank you. Thank you.