Yanis Varoufakis

speaker

1,142 appearances 3 recordings 2 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 3 May

Yanis Varoufakis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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And the bleakness all around me, I mean, I was part of the 1984 miners' strike, the 1986-1997 whopping dispute and so on.

And, you know, I had this, I'm not your conventional lefty.

I mean, I knew we were fighting the wrong war.

I mean, I was an ecologist back then.

And, you know, we were fighting to preserve the coal communities by preserving a polluting industry.

You know what I mean?

I thought that I was solidaristic to the communities that were being wrecked by Thatcher.

I was solidaristic to the workers who worked for the print unions without actually liking the print unions.

I considered them to be male chauvinist, rightist, you know, pseudo-left communities.

So I was constantly fighting a war which I was losing without actually believing in the leadership of my own side.

So when Thatcher won the third time, I thought, oh, goodness gracious me, what's going to happen now?

And I made a semi-subconscious decision that if I find a way of getting out of here, I shall, because I just can't face up to this anymore.

I couldn't face up even to the Labour Party at the time.

Right.

I mean, it wasn't just Tory versus Labour.

My own side of politics have always been very suspicious of even my hard left, as you would call it.

You know, my father taught me to beware of the Communist Party and he taught me this as a member of the Communist Party.

So, you know, for me, being nuanced was always fun.

Anyway, look, at some point, I got out of the blue an offer to go to Sydney.

And I said, no.

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