Ireland to have first gay PM

IRELAND is set to have its first openly gay prime minister after Leo Varadkar yesterday won the contest to lead the country’s governing Fine Gael party.

The 38-year-old cabinet minister is the son of an Indian immigrant and has been celebrated as the embodiment of profound generational and social changes coursing through the Catholic country.

In a speech at Dublin’s Mansion House, Mr Varadkar said every proud parent could dream big for their children. “If my election today shows anything, it is that prejudice has no hold in this Republic,” he said to thunderous applause. “I know when my father travelled 5,000 miles to build a new home in Ireland, I doubt that he ever dreamt that one day his son would grow up to be its leader and despite his differences, his son would be judged by his actions not his identity.”

Mr Varadkar will officially succeed Enda Kenny as Taoiseach when parliament next sits on June 13 after his

defeat of Simon Coveney, the housing minister. Mr Kenny announced last month he was stepping down after 15 years at the helm of the party and six years in charge of government.

Critics fear Mr Varadkar will drag the country to the Right and say that his inexperience could be his undoing. However, backers see him as Ireland’s answer to a wave of young, charismatic leaders rising to power in other countries from Justin Trudeau in Canada to Emmanuel Macron in France.

Throughout, Mr Varadkar, a former health minister, shrugged off the historic nature of his campaign to become Ireland’s first gay prime minister, its first of Indian descent and its youngest.

“It’s not something that defines me. I’m not a half-indian politician, or a doctor politician or a gay politician for that matter,” he told RTE 1.

But his victory will be seen as the latest symbol of Ireland’s social revolution. While it remains overwhelmingly Catholic and still has a ban on abortion, its population increasingly defines the state as a modern, liberal European one as shown in 2015 when a referendum decided to allow same-sex marriage.