Consider three people. First, Costas Lapvistas, the recently elected Syriza member of parliament for Imathia and a lecturer in economics at SOAS, University of London. Four years ago, he was at the heart of an intense debate within Syriza as to whether the party should have a policy of leaving the eurozone (“Grexit”).

In the e-book Against the Troika, which Lapavistas wrote with Heiner Flassbeck late last year, the authors predict that a Syriza or Podemos government would be met with relentless hostility from within the eurozone, and that its options would rapidly narrow: “Without effective debt restructuring a left government would find it impossible to implement an alternative programme, even in the short run . . . There can be no conflict within the EU on [the debt restructuring] that would not also raise the spectre of EMU exit.”

They turn to the practicalities of Greek exit. They suggest that a left government should start by insisting on the independence of its bank from the eurozone, including alternative currency (i.e. short-term paper loans, or “scrip”) denominated in euro. This paper currency could become the first step towards re-establishing a national currency. A left government should also have capital controls to prevent money leaving the country.