by Our Foreign Desk

TWO-DOZEN Syriza MPs announced a left-wing, anti-austerity breakaway from the embattled party yesterday.

Former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis led 24 other MPs into his new Popular Unity party a day after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned and called a snap election — mooted for September 20.

The new party will be the third-largest in the 300-seat Hellenic Parliament — at least until election day.

It was unclear whether former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who has criticised Mr Tsipras’s “surrender” to international creditors over the country’s third credit bailout since 2010, would also jump ship.

Mr Lafazanis said the new party would fight against the draconian terms of the €86 billion (£62bn) bailout and campaign for a Greek exit from the euro if necessary.

“If it is necessary for us to cancel the memorandum, we will follow the course of exiting the euro,” he said.

Meanwhile, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos asked conservative New Democracy party leader Evangelos Meimarakis to form a new government.

Mr Meimarakis has three days to seek coalition partners, after which the mandate would be given to the third largest party in parliament for a further three days.

The manoeuvre was reminiscent of the 2012 palace coup which saw George Papandreou’s social-democratic Pasok party government replaced by a coalition led by former European Central Bank vice-president Lucas Papademos.

Mr Papandreou was forced out after he called a referendum on the second EU bailout.