No one should take comfort from the inevitable truth hurtling towards the Eurozone countries faster than Phidippides carried news of a previous Athenian disaster abroad. It is, like most truths, simple. Greece will sooner or later fall out of the Euro.
Pro-austerity parties cannot muster enough support to form a government even with wafer-thin margins and today's opinion polls show the left-wing anti-austerity party Syriza with 27.7%. If replicated in another election this summer it would leave them as the largest party by some distance.
After all the nashing and wailing from right wing commentators in the British Press (yes, you, Janet Daley) about the death of democracy and the imposition of Brussels on a sovereign state, we can at least take heart in the fact the Greeks are now voting to take control of their future. From the land that gave us democracy itself does the Eurozone now find itself truly tested.
Summit after summit has found Europe's leaders lacking. To the layman there are inescapable conclusions. First, how does extending more debt to a country that has already demonstrated an inability to carry its existing burden make sense? Second, how can austerity cauterise the economic pain the Greek economy is experiencing when it cannot benefit from a devalued currency and surplus Eurzone members refuse to grab the issue of balance transfers by the horns?
If the Eurozone is to survive then either its members must deal with the systemic issues the currency bloc creates for certain member states or it must allow those who don't fit the model to leave. That those countries arguably shouldn't have been admitted in the first instance is a hollow and somewhat debased point at this stage. The final nail in the coffin, for Greece at least, is that core Eurozone countries (France, Germany and Italy) have just lost patience.