Turkeys don't vote for Christmas

Giorgos Papandreou won tonight’s vote of confidence for his new government. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas; so, why on earth would Pasok MPs have voted down Papandreou, sent the country to elections and risked losing their seats? Never going to happen. I saw bits and pieces of the debate. Opposition leader Antonis Samaras was a disgrace – walking out because Deputy PM Theodoros Pangalos said democracy came to Greece in 1981, not 1974, and as such insulting, according to Samaras, Konstantinos Karamanlis. Papandreou’s Greek is really bad. I would have thought, at times like these, you need a leader who can speak some recognisable form of Greek. Evangelos Venizelos is effectively Greece’s new supremo. I liked it last week when he said he’d decided to take the finance job out of ‘patriotic duty’. I know he didn't mean it; but at least he thinks in these terms or was not embarrassed to express him like this.