In July’s election Greeks passed a grim verdict on Syriza’s record in government. Back in the January 2015 contest Alexis Tsipras’s radical-left party had surged to victory, promising to challenge the austerity “memoranda” being imposed on Greece by the European institutions. Yet within months Syriza had accepted Brussels’s demands for further austerity — and over its next four years in office it became a mere enforcer for the welfare and public service cuts this implied. This summer it was finally thrown out of office, as the right-wing New Democracy returned to power.

The embrace of austerity in the name of European rules also marked a shift in Syriza’s domestic political positioning — becoming increasingly like the previously dominant center-left party Pasok, it embarked on a repressive course against social movements and notably those fighting against evictions. At the same time, it moved notably to the right on foreign policy, including through Tsipras’s sealing of closer ties with Israel. Nonetheless, until recently this turn did little to open up political space to Syriza’s left, as its austerian and repressive turn gravely weakened Greeks’ hope that change is even possible.

The DiEM25 movement, led by former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, aims precisely to break out of this vicious circle. This European-wide movement, and its Greek referent MeRA25, insist that Syriza did not have to take the choices it did, and that with further crises on the horizon, the battle for Europe remains to be fought and won. After almost securing seats in May’s European election, in July’s national election MeRA25 won representation for the first time, with its 200,000 votes giving it nine MPs in the 300-seat Greek Parliament.