FORMER Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras launched his new “left alliance” at a rally by the Acropolis in Athens last night.

Mr Tsipras left Syriza, the party he led in government from 2015-19, in 2025. His new vehicle goes by the acronym Elas, evoking the names of the wartime communist resistance as well as a common abbreviation for the Greek police — a perhaps deliberate political ambiguity.

Mr Tsipras’s Syriza administration initially raised hopes of a socialist fightback across Europe, but buckled under EU pressure and ended imposing the harshest austerity programme on the continent before losing the 2019 election. He said at the rally Elas would confront “a world of war and injustice.”

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) said the new party was “another barrier to what people need” promoting “recycled social democracy” and discredited ex-ministers.

It was “the same fairy tale that Syriza and Tsipras dished up in the past,” it charged.