Shane Coleman: Forget the glossy photo-ops, Leo
A UGUST may be the Sunday of summer, but nobody seems to have told Leo Varadkar. The rest of the political world folded up their tents and headed off for a break a few weeks back, but the Taoiseach has barely been out of the headlines.
While his predecessor often came across like a rabbit caught in the headlights when dealing with the fourth estate, Varadkar couldn’t be more comfortable with the media – particularly new media. And he seems determined to use it to his advantage.
Whether it’s his weekly video message, attending gay pride marches, posing with J1 students or more formal press interviews on his official visit to Canada, he has maintained a near permanent media presence unprecedented for a Taoiseach in August.
He’s taken the Bertie Ahern media management template and upgraded it for the 24-7 news cycle that exists today.
And in doing so, he has arguably connected himself to an audience that has never been available to Fine Gael politicians. The photograph of the Taoiseach with two J1 students, one of whom hadn’t immediately recognised him when he visited the restaurant where she worked in Chicago, is a perfect example.
It had echoes of the kind of coverage Ahern used to get during the 1997 general election campaign – more celebrity than politician.
But such coverage comes with a health warning attached, the worry that a ‘style over substance’ label will apply and that it’ll stick.
Already questions are being asked in the media about the merit of Varadkar’s visit to Canada, which – it is being pointed out – is the third engagement between the prime ministers of the two countries in four months.
Depending on your perspective, the first meeting between Varadkar and Justin Trudeau was a triumph of diplomacy or a cringe fest, replete with dodgy socks and two jocks going through their paces in the Phoenix Park.
The fact that the aforementioned jocks clearly got on so well probably tipped most people towards the former. If the prime minister of one of the G7 countries wanted to build an alliance with us and our modern, hip(-ish) Taoiseach, it’s hard to see much downside.
The story of Varadkar’s rise to power against the odds is a compelling one and understandably appealing to centrist statesmen and women, anxious to demonstrate their liberal credentials by association. But the Taoiseach needs to be careful as to how this plays back home.
Trudeau may be a media darling but most voters here will barely know who he is. And a proportion of older voters mightn’t be too keen on what he had to say when telling the Taoiseach that access to abortion was a “fundamental” human right.
Too many photo-ops, however appealing they seem, can also alienate voters, particularly if they feel they’re a substitute for action and delivery. The Taoiseach reportedly got a “rapturous reception” at the Montreal Gay Pride event but it’s the third Pride event Varadkar has attended in a matter of weeks.
The vast majority of voters clearly couldn’t care less about the Taoiseach’s sexuality. They will understand the importance of him attending the Dublin and (given the campaign for gay marriage in the North) Belfast events. But some of them might be asking if accompanying Trudeau at a parade in Canada is any more than just a soft-focus photo op?
They may wonder if he’s more concerned with rubbing shoulders with the fellow bright young things in the liberal centre (Macron and Trudeau being the most obvious examples) in a mutual love-in?
Equally, of course, they may not. The reality is that nobody knows how Varadkar’s PR modus operandi will play with voters. We’re in uncharted territory. Opinion was hugely divided when the Taoiseach referenced the popular, but hugely cheesy, rom-com ‘Love Actually’ on his first visit to Downing Street.
Those of us who believed he came across like a TV show contestant who’d won a day trip to Number 10 were told we didn’t ‘get it’ – we weren’t the audience. The ‘audience’ was younger voters, largely uninterested in the normal diplomatic conventions and who only sporadically paid attention to politics.
Perhaps. And perhaps they also liked the idea of Varadkar’s maple leaf and Mountie socks (not to mention Trudeau’s embarrassing ‘Star Wars’ version).
After all, there was much condescending tittering when Bertie Ahern appeared as a match analyst on RTÉ’s Premier League soccer highlights. But, at his peak, there was no more popular politician than Ahern.
There is a view in Fine Gael that Fianna Fáil, and Micheál Martin in particular, will be flummoxed by Varadkar’s PR blitz. “August is a month when most politicians do nothing. He’s giving the impression of somebody who’s always working. Nobody’s ever used August for that before. FF won’t be happy,” one source commented this week.
And with a general election very possible in the next 12 months, Varadkar is also sending out a signal to the FG troops: ‘I’m ready, are you?’
However, such positive PR tends to be merely the icing on the cake. If the Government isn’t seen to be delivering on housing or the health service, sunny photo-ops abroad can make a leader seem distant and out of touch. They can also lead to tensions at Cabinet with ministers wondering if there’s space for their own ambitions in a media world dominated by their leader.
Varadkar himself will be acutely aware that the honeymoon, if there was one, will soon be coming to an end and voters will be quickly asking ‘where’s the beef?’
Today is Leo Varadkar’s 70th day in office, most of them coming in the quietest period in politics. Fairness dictates that it’s far too soon to make any judgements. But politics is seldom fair. By this point in his tenure, Brian Cowen was already fending off accusations of a lack of urgency in dealing with an emerging crisis and he would never recover.
That’s not the case for Varadkar, but September and October are huge. The Budget, housing, Brexit and Northern Ireland are major issues on the horizon and, so far, he has been less than convincing on any of them. If he is seen to deliver – and he has the ability to do so – the emerging grumblings about ‘style over substance’ will die.
But if he doesn’t, then it won’t be long before the media and voters starting asking questions. Even in our image-obsessed world, all the glossy photos-ops and cleverly managed tweets in the world won’t help. They might prove a liability. That, Taoiseach, is politics actually.
Those of us who believed he came across like a TV show contestant who’d won a day trip to No.10 Downing Street were told we didn’t ‘get it’