Listen: Does Alexis Tsipras stand a chance of becoming Greece’s prime minister again?

Production: By Europod, in co-production with Sphera Network.

EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms.

Find the full transcript below:

Hi, today we are bringing a special episode recorded in Paris, together with Ioannis Tsioulis, journalist from the Greek media Popaganda, which is one of our partners inside the Sphera network.

So I invited Ioannis to talk about the comeback of Alexis Tsipras in Greece, ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.

Does he stand a chance to win the election and become prime minister again?

And what has changed since 2015?

So maybe a very quick recap.

Alexis Tsipras came to power in Greece in 2015 with the party Syriza, a coalition of left-wing and radical left parties.

He then held power for four and a half years in a coalition with the right-wing party Independent Greeks.

Tsipras is known for being the one who renegotiated the loan conditions between Greece and the so-called Troika during the Greek financial crisis.

And he’s also known for having accepted the proposed austerity measures despite the refusal of the Greek population back then.

Then Tsipras lost the snap election he called in 2019, and the right-wing party New Democracy won and has been in power ever since, with Kyriakos Mitsotakis as prime minister.

So Ioannis, I’d like to first ask you what happened with Syriza since 2019.

So it was inevitable for Syriza to lose this election because the party got elected on anti-austerity measures and, essentially, during the four and a half years they were governing Greece, they only implemented strong austerity measures.

They crushed the middle class with their policies because the Troika asked them to meet specific financial goals. Some policies were imposed by the European Union, so they had no choice, but others were their own choices, and they chose to crush the middle class.

And when you choose to crush the middle class, you know there will be instability. And when it’s the largest part of Greek society, you know there will be backlash.

They also decided to solve the name dispute with North Macedonia.

Nobody would touch this issue because, especially in the northern part of Greece, the branding of Macedonia was something super, super important.

But Syriza, with the help of the European Union, solved this in an amicable way, and some people were very, very irritated about this.

They thought he was conceding to the European Union for salaries and money. He gave away the name of Macedonia.

So he slowly lost his popularity, which also explains why Tsipras is creating a new movement called ELAS, which means Alliance of Greek Left.

So do you think Tsipras, with this new movement, actually stands a chance of winning the election next year?

So look, Alexis Tsipras is like a political rock star. The way he rose to power, the way he became famous…

People are always looking for messiahs. All around the world we suffer from this syndrome of messianism. We look for someone to save us.

During the time he spent as leader of Syriza, the party never managed to produce an heir to him.

Nobody had not only his popularity but also his appeal to the masses that could replace him as leader.

So when he stepped down from Syriza, essentially the party was destroyed. It started polling lower and lower.

In the end, he tried to rebrand himself.

He wrote a book about his version of what happened and why he pivoted from his anti-austerity promises.

Then he decided to introduce a new party. Before that he called it a movement, and now it’s a party.

He managed to become the second-highest polling party in just two weeks.

I do think that, under specific circumstances, and especially considering how unpopular the current right-wing government has become in Greece, he could come close to a tie, maybe even win by a very small margin.

But people still hold a huge grudge against him, especially over the North Macedonia agreement. It wasn’t that long ago.

Tsipras was known for being one of the very few radical left leaders in Europe at the time.

Is he defending the same ideas as before?

I don’t think that his ideological platform has changed at all.

What is funny is that many of the policies he has announced now go directly against policies he himself voted for when he was in power.

That naturally raises the question: why didn’t you do it when you had the chance?

There is no easy answer to that. It’s a very difficult question with many factors to take into account.

I think he’s still a radical left leader, but he’s also trying to introduce this new idea of “radical patriotism” in order to appeal to more conservative audiences as well.

And because Greece is a country where, if I remember correctly, around 89% of people say their culture is superior to other cultures in Europe, you cannot win a landslide victory without speaking to that sense of national pride.

So I think his political platform is radical but also contradictory, because it’s difficult to be both a sovereignist and a left-wing politician at the same time.

It’s confusing, but it definitely has an audience.

He’s polling very, very well.

I think it’s going to be difficult for him to win, but I don’t think it’s impossible.