Tsipras is unsparing about Yanis Varoufakis, his finance minister during the 2015 negotiations, describing him as ‘more of a celebrity and less of an economist’ and saying the former minister quickly became a liability. He writes that Varoufakis appeared unhappy on the night of the referendum and that his conduct after the vote made him unsuitable for a central negotiating role.
The former prime minister also singles out Zoe Konstantopoulou, whom he says he came to regard as ‘self-destructive intransigence’ in the speaker’s chair. He characterises her approach as consistently confrontational and unable to bend to the compromises he judged necessary while governing.
Pavlos Polakis draws criticism for his handling of the pandemic and for a confrontational style that, Tsipras says, sometimes put ‘emotions above the collective cause’. Nikos Pappas is reproached for the failed first competition for television licences and for the consequences that followed. Tsipras says, in retrospect, he should have asked Pappas to step back from frontline politics after the episode.
Efi Achtsioglou is described as having declined his invitation to take the party leadership before the 2023 election. Tsipras says she told him she felt unprepared and could not reconcile family commitments with the demands of the role, a decision he says surprised him and later regretted as a strategic error.
On Stefanos Kasselakis, who succeeded him as party leader, Tsipras writes of a young politician who appeared ‘certain’ of rapid success and who struck him as arrogant. He defends his choice not to intervene directly in the subsequent leadership contest, denying versions of events circulated during the campaign.
Tsipras also targets the so-called ‘umbrella’ grouping within the party, a tendency he links to figures such as Euclid Tsakalotos and other members of the party’s left wing. He accuses the faction of opposing his attempts to transform SYRIZA into a broader, modern left party and suggests internal divisions contributed to the party’s defeat in 2023.
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