Union, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund “Troika”. To this end, he and Tsipras agreed to one concession after another. It was only after the Greek population rejected austerity in a landslide referendum vote that Tsipras finally dispensed with Varoufakis’ services, as he agreed to austerity measures that went beyond any discussed previously. Only after the betrayal he helped to prepare did Varoufakis attempt to strike an oppositional pose.

In an interview with the Observer last month, Varoufakis was brazen in declaring that when he was in charge of the negotiations, Syriza proposed “standard Thatcherite or Reaganesque” economic policies, including tax reductions and privatisations. He boasted to the London audience that he had the support of US President Barack Obama, who agreed that austerity “sucked.”

However, the meat ofHouse of Commons, of her formidable defence of her government and her philosophy... the world was a better place when it allowed formidable personalities, like that of Mrs Thatcher, to rise to the top.”

Varoufakis’ musings on Britain in the 1980s point to the central role played by Stalinism in the political development of the leadership of Syriza and of others such as Pablo Iglasias and Podemos in Spain, who have emerged as key political instruments for the suppression of the class struggle and the imposition of austerity.

His time as a student was spent at Essex University, where leading Euro-Communist theorist Ernesto Laclau taught as professor of political theory. David Howarth, professor of the Department of Government, boasted in the Independent January 29, of the key role the university