The week started ominously with a French journalist asking me whether the Greeks have turned cold-hearted, alluding to the apparent apathy over the drowning of hundreds of refugees off the coast of the Peloponnese and to the murky role played in this tragedy by our coastguard. Yes, I replied without a second thought. A population that has been brutalised by 13 years of economic crisis, whose median real incomes are now 40 per cent lower than in 2007, and whose democracy was crushed in 2015 (when their brave referendum vote against the terms of the EU bailout was ignored), have become too numb and cynical to care even about their own rights. How else can one explain the recent electoral triumph of a prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose intelligence agency has been caught spying on political opponents, his own cabinet and the top brass of our armed forces?
[See also: The remarkable range of Glenda Jackson]
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