How to lose a European country

Five years later, the transition to postmodern parliamentary dictatorship is well advanced.

‘This is no time for sadness, we are too pissed off’, the head of an intensive care unit at a hospital in my Thessaloniki constituency told me recently. Along with his staff of dedicated doctors and nurses, he had not slept the previous night, which he evocatively described as ‘our Night of St Bartholomew’. I asked why he was fuming. ‘I lost a 43-year-old who could have been saved’, he replied angrily, adding: ‘But it is the lies, the damned lies, and the propaganda that drive me mad’.