The Greek election results were, first and foremost, a victory for the center-right New Democracy, whose nearly 40 percent of the vote secured it an absolute majority in parliament. For the time since 2009 — when the center-left PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) last won an election — a single party will form the government. Throughout most of the crisis, Greece has been run by coalitions, including Syriza’s pact with the right-wing ANEL (Independent Greeks). But New Democracy’s victory has formally brought that period to an end. Political stability has returned to Greece, and the traditional forces of government are back in power.

In practice, this stability began to return in late 2015, when Syriza surrendered to the European Union and signed a bailout agreement with Greece’s lenders. New Democracy’s victory is primarily the result of the four years of austerity Syriza applied at the behest of the lenders, hitting middle-to-low incomes hard and reducing national and popular sovereignty. Syriza’s conservative foreign policy — turning Greece into a committed military and political ally of the United States and Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean — was a further factor in this defeat, particularly as it led Syriza to cut a deal on North Macedonia’s official name that was rejected by broad swathes of Greek public opinion.

However, Syriza’s defeat mostly owed to the economic and social policies it adopted after its capitulation to the EU. Considering that Syriza originally promised a radical challenge to the Greek and European status quo, its evolution has been nothing short of disgraceful. Alexis Tsipras and his party are a lesson in what the European radical left ought to avoid in years to come.