Some may doubt his sincerity, or fear that it’s divisive, but Leo’s brawny nationalism is very, very popular

LEO Varadkar’s burgeoning interest in nationalism promises to be one of the most interesting political developments of 2018. The son of an Indian immigrant is showing the potential to be the most nationalistic leader of Fine Gael in living memory. It’s a long distance from the time when serving taoiseach John Bruton was caught on tape making a dismissive reference to the ‘f ****** peace process’.

Few are entirely sure of Varadkar’s motivation… or conviction. His sense of Irish identity is undeniable and he has been an active participant in Irish language socialising in recent months, having recently passed oral Irish proficiency tests. He has been showcasing it too. But you don’t have to speak as Gaeilge fluently or believe in a 32-county Ireland to prove your patriotism to this State… or allow it to define your politics. The more cynical are wondering if Varadkar perceives political advantage in wrapping the green flag around him, to talk as if he wants to reclaim the fabled fourth green field. Unless I missed it, I don’t remember him making a big issue of the North during his Fine Gael leadership campaign.

There’s advantage in it now it seems. There’s little doubt but that he and Fine Gael have gathered a Brexit boost in recent opinion poll findings, including the Ireland Thinks polls for this paper. Varadkar and his able deputy Simon Coveney, who doubles up as Foreign Affairs Minister, have put the island’s interests to the fore in their dealings with the UK and EU, insisting that a hard border would not be returned. Whether or not that will be the eventual outcome of Brexit (no matter that few on this island, north or south, want a hard border) remains to be seen but to date the Irish Government has played its hand exceptionally well in getting commitments from the relevant partners.

But Varadkar has gone further than that and has spoken positively about the potential for Irish unity. This is the type of talk that we’ve heard very little of it in Ireland in recent years. His predecessor Enda Kenny made a comment about it post-Brexit but mitigated it by saying he didn’t expect a border poll for many years.

Indeed, there has been something of an antipathy towards the idea in the south of a united Ireland ever since voters threw out the constitutional claim to the territory of the entire island in the 1998 referendum that was part of the Good Friday Agreement.

In southern Irish politics, the focus over the last couple of decades has been on economic issues, playing to the old saw that ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ that decides votes. That’s not necessarily the case, however, as Fine Gael discovered in the last general election particularly with the failure of its ‘keep the recovery going’ campaign. Sometimes you need more… and successful referendum campaigns such as the introduction of marriage equality didn’t deliver a dividend either.

Sometimes parties have to appeal to ideology… and the more populist the better. Fine Gael appears to be stealing political clothes here, unexpectedly because it has limited tradition in this area.

Fianna Fáil – its longstanding rival in southern politics, but now sullenly propping it up in government – always has marketed itself more strongly as the party of national unity in this jurisdiction. It was the party in power when the Good Friday Agreement was signed, after all.

Reunification

Suddenly, voters who might be deemed in the middle – because it is an exaggeration to say that Fine Gael is a party of the right, in the way that such parties are known for their policies internationally – might regard themselves as having an alternative to Fianna Fáil that isn’t Sinn Féin.

Sinn Féin’s likely reaction to the greening of Varadkar may be to scoff, publicly at least. But it has reason to be concerned. Sinn Féin is in danger of becoming the new Labour in the Irish political system, the so-called half-party that props up one of the big two in government. While Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are most unlikely to ever return to their popularity of old, the rise of the candidates of the left has been less pronounced than they would like to think.

Their vote has fractured among many independents and parties and while it is more sizeable than in the post-2008 crash era it has not reached anything near the heights that it might have reached if the electorate was not still overwhelmingly conservative in its political approach.

Sinn Féin has flourished through populism, promising everything as if it costs nothing. Mr Varadkar has been exceptionally tough in his Dáil interactions with the party. He really does not seem to like the party but now we’re discovering he likes republicanism.

That’s actually fair enough because there are many republicans who are against violence and who dislike intensely the idea of long-standing supporters of (or engagers in) terrorism claiming the high moral ground. That’s why his citing of John Hume – the greatest Derryman of them all – makes perfect sense. And it’s why he won’t let it look as if Sinn Féin is dictating the pace on reunification if he senses that the medium-to-long-term political current is flowing that way.

What’s interesting is the way Varadkar senses the wind is blowing down south. While those who are interested look at the demographics in the North – and the possibility of a Catholic majority over Protestants has given some the hope that there will be a majority in favour of unification some day not too far off – not enough attention is given to the possibility that people in south would vote no to a united Ireland in a border poll.

My television colleague Ivan Yates caused some offence recently when he said he didn’t like ‘Nordies’ but unfortunately that attitude is prevalent in many southern quarters. The dislike for the DUP, for example, is palpable. Quite apart from the cultural distance that has developed because of partition – not withstanding the sporting unification provided by Gaelic football and rugby – many people in the south simply don’t want to bear the cost of unification.

The issue more than anything else is the cost of integrating the Six Counties into an all-island government-funded entity. The British subsidise the North with an enormous £9billion annual cash transfer. We simply could not afford it. That, more than anything else, could cause a shock southern rejection of unification should the choice be offered.

There will be those who’ll claim that Ireland together would suddenly be a powerful economic entity. This is a fantasy. We would remain an island of just six million people and being together is not going to make much difference. A couple of years ago Sinn Féin pushed strongly an economic paper called Modelling Irish Unification from academics at Canada’s University of British Columbia. It estimated that Irish unity could lead to €35.6billion growth in GDP across the island within eight years of unification.

Unfortunately, it was the thinnest of publications based on the most heroic of assumptions, including a major cull of public expenditure that any sensible person knows will not happen as a result of unification.

And yet politicians know that voters love ideas that aren’t necessarily supported by evidence. Mr Varadkar follows public opinion – and he is playing a long term game in donning the 32-county green jersey early and loudly.