Alexis Tsipras’s resignation as leader of Syriza on June 29 symbolizes the end of an era. This era had begun in spring 2010 with the imposition of unprecedentedly brutal neoliberal shock therapy and imposition of European Union (EU) tutelage on Greece. Yet this was also the moment of an impressive wave of popular mobilization and, in January 2015, the rise to power of a radical-left force hitherto on the margins of the political system. Seven months later came the capitulation of this same formation to EU diktats — and the destruction of the hope that this small country represented during these tumultuous years.

Tsipras’s resignation follows Syriza’s poor performance in Greece’s two general elections held this May and June. Both contests brought a strengthening of conservatives and the far right and a major defeat for the Left. Three elements stand out in particular: First, that prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy party consolidated its dominant position in the political scene. Then, that Syriza sank into yet steeper decline, stripping it of its role as an opposition even capable of claiming to return to office in the foreseeable future. Yet even so, in the June 25 contest the old social democratic party Pasok failed to surpass the score it achieved in May. An entirely systemic force, internally riven by contradictory strategies, this party cannot present an alternative to the existing government.