Slowly but surely, the unthinkable is coming to be thought. Europe’s monetary marriage was supposed to admit no divorce, but the idea of Greece being put asunder is now being canvassed openly in Brussels and Berlin. The immediate reason for talking taboo is that there is no longer any government in Athens to do business with. But the underlying issues are twin crises of democracy and the economy, crises that could soon engulf the euro as a whole.

The Greeks want to stay in the single currency, but not on the ruinous terms that their establishment agreed to. A sudden slide out of the euro would certainly be a trauma. But when the pensions of older Greeks have already been cut by a quarter, and when half their young compatriots are unemployed, it is getting tricky to argue that things would necessarily be worse. — Excerpts from The Guardian editorial