Varadkar helped the Tories get Brexit done — but what do we get?
The Taoiseach put his own career on the line to allow Boris Johnson go to the polls with an exit package, writes Philip Ryan
‘He was handed a solid deal to wave at the people who just wanted the debate to end’
BORIS Johnson owes Leo Varadkar a great deal of gratitude for his historic election win on Friday morning last. But what are we going to get in return?
There was every chance Johnson could have been spending the last two months roaming the UK telling voters he was willing to leave the EU without a deal if Brussels did not bow to his demands.
Conservative slogans could have been very different if the Taoiseach had not travelled to Liverpool in October to meet the prime minister for a final throw of the dice on the Brexit roulette table.
Instead of “Get Brexit done”, Johnson could have been telling voters it was “His Deal or No Deal” as he posed for photographs in fish factories or drove a digger through a wall branded with an EU flag.
The choice for UK voters in a general election with a no-deal Brexit on the table would have been very stark. You only have to look at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s election result for how UK voters reacted to an unclear vision on Brexit.
Throughout the campaign, Corbyn struggled to explain his personal preference on Brexit. He said he would renegotiate a new deal with Brussels that would inclear volve close alignment to the EU’s customs union and single market after Britain exited.
But it didn’t end there. Corbyn pledged to put this mystery deal, which no one in the EU had seen or let alone agreed, to yet another referendum. A People’s Vote would allow the electorate a vote on Corbyn’s deal or alternatively vote to remain in the European Union.
And which way would Corbyn campaign if such a referendum had ever taken place, you ask?
Well, he wouldn’t. In his own words, he planned to adopt a “neutral stance” if a referendum took place. An awful lot of ifs, buts and maybes for the Brexit-weary UK electorate.
Corbyn was duly rewarded by voters for his confusing Brexit stance. Not since 1935 has Labour received so few votes from the British electorate.
Back then, Clement Atlee was the Labour leader who went on to form a wartime cabinet with Conservative prime minister Winston Churchill. However, Johnson, a Churchill biographer, will not need Corbyn’s support in the coming years.
Thanks to Leo Varadkar and the other EU member states, Johnson was able to offer UK voters a very choice. Light at the end of the seemingly never-ending Brexit tunnel.
Johnson repeated ad nauseam that a vote for the Conservative Party would bring to an end the uncertainty around Britain’s exit. It would eventually happen, or at least the first stage of the divorce would be over and negotiators could focus on thrashing out a new trade deal.
He didn’t really mention the latter too much. But look, it’s difficult to make people concentrate on anything more than a three-word campaign slogan. So “Get Brexit Done” it was.
And it worked. It worked very well. Boris Johnson, a kind of cartoon version of a politician from Viz magazine, will now run the UK government for the next five years.
Himself, Carrie and their dog Dilyn can settle into life in Downing Street without the worry of complex parliamentary votes on Brexit weighing heavy on their minds. John Bercow has even retired. It’s easy street.
But where is the thanks for Leo Varadkar, the Irish Government and the rest of the EU in his victory speeches?
The Taoiseach broke all sorts of protocols and risked his own political career to allow Johnson to go to the electorate with some fashion of a Brexit deal under his arm.
For three years, the Government insisted they would not hold bilateral talks with Britain out of a sense of duty to their EU partners.
Yet the Taoiseach jetted into Liverpool on a mild October morning to find a Brexit resolution.
The two leaders worked out a path that would eventually lead to the EU Council agreeing to a form of words to appease Conservative Party eurosceptics who would not support Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
Johnson was convinced to ignore the Democratic Unionist Party’s objection to a border down the Irish Sea, even though Arlene Foster was supporting his Tory Party government.
Johnson will claim there won’t be, but for all intent and purposes, there will be. The checks on goods will be in Larne rather than Newry and there will be no border on the island of Ireland, or so we are led to believe.
The point is Johnson had a solid deal to wave in front of people who just wanted the Brexit debate to end. They didn’t want to hear politicians and current-affairs shows talk about it any more.
If Boris had gone to the electorate without a deal, who knows what parliamentary arithmetic voters would have returned?
It would more than certainly have been a hung parliament.
Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party may have performed better or a least put pressure on Johnson to take a harder stance on leaving the EU without a deal.
This could have pushed more people towards Corbyn who was at least committed to leaving with some sort of agreement, or even staying.
We will just never know because Johnson did go to the electorate with a deal and was able to give voters a clear choice.
Some columnists may have to review their views too about Johnson’s political mastermind Dominic Cummings, who guided the Tories to victory.
Cummings, aided by an exit deal, agreed with the EU institutions he so despises and formulated simple campaign messaging aimed at people sick and tired of talking about Brexit. But what are we going to get from this largesse we have shown Johnson, Cummings and the rest of the Conservative Party who will now govern the United Kingdom?
The Taoiseach seems to have developed a good relationship with Johnson. But can anyone really have a good relationship with the notoriously flaky prime minister? Just ask Arlene Foster.
In a statement issued after Varadkar and Johnson spoke following the UK election, they committed to working closely in the months and years ahead. As Britain drifts away from mainland Europe, a good working relationship between the two leaders will be important.
Fine Gael will go to the ends of the earth to highlight their achievements on Brexit once the general election campaign starts here. They will warn us all that the job is far from over and another cliff-edge is approaching when the transition period expires in December 2020.
The message to voters will be to stick with Fine Gael who can “Get Brexit done” rather than put your faith in the unknown quantities in Fianna Fail who wrecked the economy a decade ago and so forth.
They will emphasise that Micheal Martin and some of his frontbench were in the government that lost the first Lisbon Referendum.
But will voters really care about Brexit when they have yet to see the worst excesses of Britain’s decision to leave?
They’ll be more worried about paying rent, sitting in traffic, avoiding hospitals or worrying about their houses being ransacked by addicts. And there’s not much the Taoiseach’s relationship with Boris Johnson can achieve in putting their minds at ease.