EPA Behind Tsipras’s Grexit strategy As any politician, the Greek PM wants to stay in power. And his best chance of doing so may be to let Greece leave the euro.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s snap decision to call a national referendum on austerity just hours before a final round of negotiations with creditors raises a simple question: What’s he up to?

The official explanation is that he feels obligated to poll voters on a question of such weight because his leftist Syriza movement was elected on a promise to end austerity. “We did not have the mandate … without consulting the Greek people,” Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on Saturday. “For a decision like that, we believe that 50+1% is needed.”

Another theory gaining currency in Brussels and other capitals holds that “Grexit” is no “Graccident.”

Ever since Syriza was elected and began taunting creditors with demands for debt relief and revised bailout terms, some European officials have harbored the quiet suspicion that Tsipras’s goal wasn’t to keep Greece in the euro but to get it out. A less conspiratorial view is that Tsipras preferred to keep Greece in, but was willing to withdraw if creditors refused to unshackle it from austerity.

With just four days left to reach a deal after months of failed talks and no resolution in sight, it looks like the time has come to pull the plug.

It’s no secret that many in his radical left coalition want to retake control of monetary policy. They believe joining the euro put a corset on Greece from which it needs to be freed.

A big majority of Greeks disagree because they know that leaving the euro would destroy their savings, give them less spending power and distance them from the rest of Europe.

For many in Syriza, a disparate coalition of communists and other radical leftists, such worries are the complaints of the rich. They demand that Tsipras bring an end to austerity, no matter what. If that means leaving the euro, so be it.

Those same Syriza hardliners attacked Tsipras’ compromise proposal to creditors earlier in the week, vowing to oppose it if it came to a vote. But, as Tsipras probably anticipated, the proposal was just as unpalatable to Germany and the IMF and failed to break the impasse.

Even if Tsipras had agreed to a deal with creditors, getting the measures through parliament may have been impossible without the opposition. But that route would have triggered new elections after the vote and may have cost him power.

By calling a referendum instead, Tsipras can shift the blame on the failure of the talks to the creditors. All Athens (the “cradle of democracy”) was asking for was to put the matter to the people. Europe, unreasonable as ever, refused. Varoufakis played on that theme on Saturday via Twitter: “Democracy deserved a boost in euro-related matters. We just delivered it. Let the people decide. (Funny how radical this concept sounds!),” he tweeted.

Yet Varoufakis and Tsipras knew full well that Europe would never endorse a referendum on whether to continue austerity for the simple reason that the outcome would be clear. No pensioner would vote to cut their pensions anymore than a shop owner or other business would embrace higher taxes.

The vast majority of Greeks oppose what they derisively refer to as “the memorandum,” the deal with creditors that forced deep spending cuts on the country in return for bailout money.

It was that popular resentment, after all, that fueled Syriza’s rise.

But as Greece’s leadership surely anticipated, the refusal by eurozone finance ministers on Saturday afternoon to delay the deadline for a deal until after the July 5 referendum means the vote is pointless.

By then, Greece will likely have defaulted on an IMF loan and the ECB will have cut off liquidity to its banks, leaving them vulnerable to collapse. Put simply, Greece will be on its way out of the eurozone.

Tsipras can claim it was all Europe’s fault for not letting Greeks decide, when in fact, by calling the referendum, he made the decision for them.