Brussels should not be in the business of making or breaking governments. But that is nevertheless the dangerous point to which the European Union’s mishandling of the Greek crisis has brought it. The union “made” the present Syriza government in January this year by refusing to offer its predecessor, New Democracy, the softer terms on debt which would have allowed it to stay in office. But that could be put down to happenstance. The situation now is different, with European leaders openly campaigning for a yes vote in the Greek referendum due to be held on Sunday. A yes vote would almost certainly lead to the fall of the Syriza government. If this is not regime change, it comes perilously close to it, and it is a profoundly damaging development for the European project.

It is worth asking again at this critical stage who is most to blame, because that question is so often asked in the wrong way. Alexis Tsipras and his colleagues are amateur politicians who in normal circumstances would have been fulminating from the opposition benches without worrying about what to do if they achieved power. It is hardly surprising therefore that, cocky and erratic, they have made mistake after mistake.

But what do you have on the other side? What you have is an assembly of mature politicians with years of successfully navigating their own national politics and those of Europe behind them. A great repository of skill and expertise, which has produced what? One of the worst, if not the worst, crises in the history of the union. This is why mournful pronouncements of both parties being at fault are so unbalanced.

The main fault lies with a European leadership so nervously tracking the reactions of its own electorates, and so unready to admit any flaws in the contested economic dogmas of recent years, that it has refused to bend when it should have bent. Above all, these leaders seemed ready to ignore the duty of compensation Europe owes to Greece. Everybody agrees that Greeks, after years of clientist politics, were the authors of their own misfortunes. But what is not so readily agreed on is that Europe, and the IMF, have compounded and multiplied those troubles. Austerity has made things much, much worse. European money has been wasted to inefficiently prop up a Greek economy in terminal condition in large part because of European policies. If a doctor had over a period of years persistently prescribed a series of medicines which made a patient’s condition more and more serious, the patient would sue – and they would win their suit. It might be said that while Greece owes us money, we owe Greece an apology. And with an apology comes obligations.

The Greek prime minister and his minister of finance, Yanis Varoufakis, pleaded with their European partners to acknowledge the deeply unfair nature of the situation in which events had placed Greece. Greece was being asked to pay off its debts with money which it had not got to produce a recovery which was inherently implausible. It may have suited Germany and others to believe in the wobbly mirage of a Greek economy springing back into vigorous life – they would not have to cope with the political consequences when it did not do so – but a Greek government of any colour could not be expected to play the same mindgames. A persistent confusion between cuts and reforms made things worse: they are not the same thing. Refusing help because reforms were not sufficiently advanced was therefore logically absurd.

As the union and Greece slipped to the edge of the precipice, the IMF lacked the courage to make it clear early enough that its expert view was that substantial debt relief was required. If it had done so, it might have changed the debate. As it is, the unhappy outcome is either that the Greek government will fall, and will be seen to have fallen because Brussels wants it to fall, or it will survive because a majority of Greeks want to defy Brussels. It would be hard to think of a worse pair of alternatives.