Leo and Martin both trapped by golden rule of political leaks: Don’t get caught

I am no stranger to leaks or leak inquiries – our two coalition chiefs need to learn these lessons fast

ONE delightful summer’s afternoon, years back, my stroll across the Leinster House plinth towards my lunch was halted by a civil servant I knew to see. One’s progress can be barred on the plinth, but usually it’s by a politician of bruised ego, rather than a meek man of few words, who rarely addressed me with more than a perfunctory ‘hello’.

I was surprised. The subsequent conversation centred on the secret quest of a senior politician to avoid austerity-era pay cuts. Soon I was on my way again with another thought on my mind besides my lunch: what the bloody hell was that all about?

The mystery was solved a couple of days later when a pile of documents arrived for me by post to Leinster House. They had been sent anonymously and we ran an article in the Irish Mail on Sunday that exposed hypocrisy. I’d a vague suspicion of who’d paid for the stamp – but nothing could be proved.

A few days after that a senior garda asked me to come down to a city centre station for a chat. On the phone he seemed like a nice man, so against the advice of our lawyer, I paid him a visit.

I was right. He was a nice man. But not for the first time in that short space of days I was astonished – the senior politician wanted me arrested for a crime.

I wasn’t arrested. Instead, as the garda photocopied my statement, we had such a convivial chat that I convinced him to give me a tour of the station.

A wiser man may have learned many new lessons from this montage: I learned none. But I did have reinforced two fundamental rules of politics. Rule 1: Without leaks there is no political discourse. Rule 2: If you’re involved in a leak – on either side – don’t get caught.

Politics is truly in flux when our two most powerful politicians have found themselves embroiled in leak investigations because they broke Rule 2.

YOU can half understand Taoiseach Micheál Martin blundering into the furore over the leaking of the Mother and Baby Homes Report. In his Fianna Fáil enclave of the coalition, it’s still 1997 really. Since they came to power six months ago, Fianna Fáil have been so embarrassingly ignorant of how modern government and communications work that something like this mistake was bound to happen. Mr Martin has denied leaking the damning report to the media. Here’s a tip from a hack on the sharp end of the business. If someone in your operation is going to leak a report who is utterly unsuited to such political chicanery, it’s best not to have the Taoiseach give an interview accompanying the article. It’s a dead giveaway.

The Fianna Fáil team might have observed the dignified manner in which a man they so derided, Enda Kenny, handled the Magdalene Report and apology. He knew that you don’t disseminate inquiries into horrors involving women and babies as if they were a sneak preview of Budget cuts on the price of a pint. He simply walked into the Dáil with no fanfare and let the media report his speech, understanding that he was dealing with people who had been conned and abused by the State for long enough. I’d say 99% of leaks from government have public interest. This one, however, was callous and foolish.

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar though? As I’ve already shown, surprises come every day in this game – but this really was a shock. As a politician the Tánaiste has his faults – they all do. But for at least a decade he could do no wrong when it came to media management.

Through accusations of being spin-obsessed and use of the derogatory #leotheleak hashtag we are being asked to believe media ability is a deficiency of Varadkar’s. But media mastery has served him well for most of the last 15 years. Throughout, he has almost always displayed another of the most enviable traits – the ability to adapt.

Even before he was elected a TD in 2007, Mr Varadkar was well known to us reporters as a man who would say something interesting (not universal in politics). Then as a young Fine Gael TD he was unafraid to take on Fianna Fáil’s big beasts, like Bertie Ahern and Brian

Cowen, presenting a young, brash contrast to men who had seemed to have been around forever.

Now, after it appears that Mr Varadkar himself has been around forever, we forget that his rise in national politics was meteoric.

After only three years in the Dáil he had established himself as a politician of such profile and power within Fine Gael that when he joined a failed heave against party leader Enda Kenny he survived on the front bench. Other significant Fine Gael figures didn’t and less than a year after the heave he was in Cabinet.

He became the youngest Taoiseach ever in 2017. A friend of Mr Varadkar’s told me that the man himself believes that, until recently, that he was blessed with luck.

This is true. Another great leader of meteoric rise, Napolean Bonaparte, always valued luck and he said: ‘Ability is nothing without opportunity.’

Mr Varadkar had ability from a young age to process complex political issues and communicate them effectively. In the boom years of the mid-2000s there was a significant expansion of media outlets. Mr Varadkar saw opportunity to make himself into a media star by courting the new outlets.

THEN, around the time he became a Cabinet Minister in 2011, social media began to revolutionise political communication. Again, Mr Varadkar adapted with an enthusiasm and skill that few others possessed.

Photogenic, articulate and with a backstory as a gay man of mixed race origins he was well poised for the social media revolution. Today, on Twitter, he has 407,700 followers. Minister Simon Harris, another who has deftly embraced the communications revolution has 202,122. Taoiseach Micheál Martin has 122,200 followers.

However, things change just as rapidly for those who think they’ve tamed the media tiger. That change often comes when they take the top job and the real pressure hits. Big decisions can lead to big mistakes.

The first mistakes came in the formation of Cabinet, trying to push forward those he perceived resembled himself. Former Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy, who was close to Mr Varadkar, ran his leadership campaign. He should never have been put in the new departmental Angola, and his career was severely damaged. And so was Mr Varadkar’s.

Many believe Mr Varadkar should have called the general election in the summer of 2019 when his popularity soared. He didn’t and was hammered in the election, mostly because of his housing policies.

He took a breather from the office of Taoiseach, moving to Tánaiste in the unique rotating arrangement, hoping to return there in 2022. New and surprising errors emerged – he provided a document to a friend, who blabbed about his access.

The straight-talking persona often lacked empathy and that finally caught up with Mr Varadkar when he made a catastrophic misjudgement of tone in his live TV attack on NPHET.

The media, and more so social media, are fickle mistresses. To woo them again successfully will be necessary for his triumphant return as Taoiseach in 2022.

It will be a long two years.