So, what does Mary Lou think of Leo? ‘He’s smarmy’
SF’s forthright new chief
MARY Lou McDonald has accused Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of being ‘smarmy’.
Speaking to Sky News, the newly elected Sinn Féin leader referred to Mr Varadkar’s penchant for novelty socks and his reference to the film Love Actually during his first visit to Downing Street last year.
When asked what word she would use to describe him, she paused for some time, before opting for ‘smarmy’.
Her jibe at the Taoiseach comes less than a day after she replaced Gerry Adams as party president during Saturday’s special ard fheis in Dublin’s RDS. It is not the first time Ms McDonald and Mr Varadkar have clashed.
In September, the Taoiseach accused Ms McDonald of being ‘very cranky’ and compared her to French far-right leader Marine Le Pen during ill-tempered exchanges in the Dáil.
Speaking to Niall Paterson, she said: ‘Leo is kind of smarmy. You’ll have seen him in Number 10 talking about Love Actually and donning various pairs of socks. So, smarmy.’
Her comments came after she shocked some by closing her ard fheis speech by declaring: ‘Up the Republic, up the rebels, agus tiocfaidh ár lá.’
The remarks had not been included on the pre-released script. While ‘tiocfaidh ár lá’ translates as ‘our day will come’, it is strongly associated with the IRA. Ms McDonald yesterday addressed widespread allegations of bullying within the party that has seen a list of councillors quit the party.
She acknowledged there had been ‘individual incidents’ and said she was taking steps to tackle the issue.
‘What I am going to do is the following: I’m setting in train two initiatives. One is focused on our local councillors, our local elected representatives – because I do think that we need to provide support, training, assistance for people who are on the front line.
‘The second piece will be a very deep dialogue and conversation with our grassroots base. We’re in good shape and Sinn Féin
‘Tiocfaidh ár la, up the rebels’
activists, for the most part, are happy, productive and thoroughly decent people.’
The new party leader also said she was hopeful she would see a united Ireland within her lifetime as Sinn Féin president.
‘I would be hopeful that in the course of my tenure as leader that, yes, we would secure a referendum on unity and we would win it. It’s doable,’ she said.
She described Brexit as an ‘absolute disaster’ and said it was ‘mutually incompatible’ with the Good Friday Agreement. ‘I sense a real resentment among Irish people that Ireland becomes collateral damage in a power play with the Tories,’ the Sinn Féin leader said.
Ms McDonald said the breadand-butter and political interests of Ireland ‘demand the entire island stay within the Customs Union and Single Market.
‘It is alarming to hear the mantra from London “we are gone, we are out” with no sense of the consequence of that.’
With crisis talks due to resume at Stormont today, aimed at restoring the power-sharing executive, Ms McDonald said she was hopeful an agreement could be reached with the DUP.
‘I think we can do business with Arlene Foster,’ she said, and she added that issues remain to be resolved but said those issues were ‘nothing insurmountable’.
She warned that there was a ‘very dangerous’ level of polarisation in the North.
‘I don’t see it returning to the circumstances that fed such an ongoing protracted and deep conflict,’ she said.
‘However, I am aware that, on the ground in the North, there has been a level of polarisation that I regard as very dangerous,’ she said.