Middle-class Athenians can be found rummaging in bins. Farmers are bringing supplies to their urban cousins. On cold nights, a pall of woodsmoke rises, because people can no longer pay heating bills.

Syriza airily promises to stop all this. It says it will increase pensions, hike the minimum wage, expand healthcare, give free electricity to 300,000 households and renationalise a chunk of the economy.

Oh, and it expects overseas creditors to offer Greece substantially better terms while it does all this. In normal times, and in a normal country, Syriza would be a joke party on the furthest fringes of the ultra-Left.

It is a coalition of Trotskyists, Maoists, eco-protesters and Occupy types. Mr Tsipras has only recently removed the Che Guevara poster from his office (his son carries the name ‘Ernesto’ in honour of that bloodthirsty South American revolutionary).

But these are not normal times. Many Greeks have switched directly to Syriza from the Centre-Right out of sheer despair.