In Greece and Portugal, Socialist governments requested the original EU/IMF bailouts and supported the public spending cuts and painful pension reforms required as part of their fiscal adjustment programmes.

Ireland’s center-left Labour party is a junior partner in the coalition government that is enforcing the country’s austerity plan, which is showing first signs of success.

In Italy and Spain, left-wing parties backed budget cuts, raising the retirement age and freezes or reductions in public sector pay as part of austerity programs enacted to save those countries from being shut out of capital markets.

Italy’s Democratic Party, the largest center-right political movement, has supported technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti’s sweeping pension and structural reforms and austerity measures despite misgivings about the impact on growth and employment.

That makes the left somewhat schizophrenic about what is happening in Greece.