Listen carefully to Leo. He may be divisive, but he rarely speaks without intent

THANK f*** for Leo Varadkar,’ I whispered in our newsroom on Monday night. A cynical and selfserving statement, I concede, and not original. You’d have to have worked in journalism in another time to fully understand it.

I first entered the world of newspapers as the age of Haughey came to an appropriately ignominious end. The UCD student newspaper I wrote for was assembled in a national newspaper newsroom, and I got the chance to listen and learn from the nocturnal journalists and production men. It was there I frequently heard the words, ‘Thank f*** for Charlie Haughey’.

Back then, as now, editors reach a panicked point in the production process when they lack a front page. To the rescue in the early Nineties – as he had in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties – would ride Charlie Haughey. He would always say or do something, not always palatable or correct, that would make the news for us all.

Leo Varadkar – for good or bad – fulfils that role for the media now. But don’t doubt that, like Charlie, when Leo speaks there is a barely concealed political strategy in the words. So what was Mr Varadkar up to in New York on Monday when he appeared to eviscerate his own Coalition Government and the now defunct NPHET?

His words weren’t a spontaneous reaction to a reference to the forthcoming publication of the terms of reference for the longawaited Covid inquiry. Mr Varadkar was asked about extracts from former chief medical officer Tony Holohan’s book. He repeated an apology for what I always felt was a logical and restrained critique of NPHET’S methods and spoke a few platitudes about how the Government had got most things right during the Covid crisis.

Then he said: ‘In relation to the first Christmas lockdown [in 2020] I think, on reflection, both NPHET and the Government made the wrong call. NPHET proposed one form of reopening, which would have meant a lot of social interactions, and we in Government proposed a different reopening plan, which involved some hospitality and some private houses.

‘In retrospect, there shouldn’t have been any opening up at all, because of the Alpha variant. And that changed things fundamentally. ‘But let’s not forget the advice from NPHET at the time initially was that the Alpha variant was not an issue of concern.’

He continued: ‘But nobody was always right. And, you know, we were slow on uptake with masks and some aspects of lockdown were probably not necessary. I think schools were closed for too long, particularly special schools. I’m not sure it was necessary to suspend construction and home-building for so long. And a lot of that was driven by public health advice.

‘So, you know, I’d hope everyone will be reflective about their role during that period.’

The only position that really counts in Irish politics is that of taoiseach. The taoiseach chairs the Cabinet and every decision eventually crosses their path.

Leo Varadkar is Taoiseach now, but Micheál Martin was taoiseach when all the decisions he referred to were made. Mr Varadkar was taoiseach during the halcyon days of spring and summer 2020 when there was a wartime-like comradeship abroad in Ireland.

A few weeks into Mr Martin’s term came Golfgate, when the political, financial and judicial elites showed we weren’t in it together. Then came the long hard slog of lockdown, social isolation, damaged businesses and death.

Momentous decisions were made. Mr Varadkar was second-in-charge in the Cabinet that made those decisions and we allegedly have collective Cabinet responsibility. But Mr Varadkar was the only senior political figure to publicly question NPHET’s methods.

This newspaper also held the policy-makers to account with robust reporting. Tony Holohan always appeared to be an unelected civil servant, enjoying profile and power but intolerant of the criticism that comes with it. Mr Varadkar may have been party to all the decisions that Mr Martin took ownership of, but we will never know as Cabinet is governed, for 30 years into the future, by confidentiality.

But the most senior politician to criticise NPHET was Leo Varadkar. And the most high-profile, impactful critique of the Government’s performance in advance of the inquiry has come from Mr Varadkar.

I’ve heard Mr Martin subtly make the same concessions of error in some of these decisions. Sadly for Mr Martin, his style is not designed for this arena, for as he said himself in New York in response to Mr Varadkar’s barely veiled criticisms, he doesn’t do ‘soundbites’.

When people like Charlie Haughey and Leo Varadkar speak, people listen, and such statements powerfully manipulate the narrative.

Mr Varadkar is performing a very delicate political manoeuvre. In military terms the grand theatre strategy means that his only meaningful ally in his struggle for a return to power is Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil. The numbers are still good for a return of the Coalition, perhaps minus the Greens and with fresh cannon fodder in the form of Labour or the Social Democrats.

Yet battles have to be fought in smaller, local theatres where individual commanders must be given every advantage. TDs tell me that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil transferred well between each other in the last election, and they expect this trend to accelerate next time.

The strategy for many Fianna Fáil candidates will be to stay ahead of the Fine Gael candidate, and this should allow them to take the last seat in many constituencies. This is particularly the case in the new three-seaters. This applies to Fine Gael candidates too.

In many constituencies, a Sinn Féin candidate is likely to top the poll. This happened in the Dublin West constituency of the Taoiseach and the Cork South Central constituency of the Tánaiste (where Finance Minister Michael McGrath and Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney were headed by Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire).

IF LEO Varadkar wants to put Fine Gael back in coalition in 2024 or 2025 he will need as many seats as possible, and in many cases this will require Fine Gael candidates beating out Fianna Fáil candidates. The rules remain as they have always been, despite Coalition: it’s every man or woman for themselves at constituency level in an election.

The day before Mr Varadkar reopened the Covid blame game, he had overruled – and humiliated, according to his colleagues – the Fianna Fáil Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue. Farmers and their attitudes to EU nitrates caps would not seem natural territory for Mr Varadkar, but he muddied his Guccis by telling farmers he would invite EU commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius to Ireland, hinting that the decision on nitrates could be changed. Mr McConalogue, who had insisted there would be no reversal, looks foolish.

This is all classic separation behaviour. Mr Varadkar is the top dog in Government and he is asserting Fine Gael’s primacy over Fianna Fáil, with the intention of giving his candidates a clear advantage in an election and himself a negotiating platform for re-entry to government. This brings Fine Gael into unprecedented territory for continuous longevity in power. Yet the risk is that these political acrobatics will alienate Fianna Fáil, apparently Mr Varadkar’s only potential Coalition partner as he has ruled out coalition with Sinn Féin.

Is a Fine Gael/Sinn Féin coalition truly unthinkable? Not for Bertie Ahern, a man who knows a little about complicated political negotiation. Asked about Fine Gael ruling out Sinn Féin this week, the Most Devious One said we’d be ‘nuts’ to believe anything that politicians say before general elections.

Mr Varadkar is losing veteran TDs like a sailor loses his pay on shore leave. There is weariness of FG in government; his party’s ideological opponent, Sinn Féin, is in the ascendant. By every measure, you could predict that one of the most prominent and, in many ways, divisive figures in Irish politics of the past decade will see his frontline political career ending. But anyone who writes off such a strategic politician would be ‘nuts’.