The Taoiseach, his quilted jacket... and how the left cannot resist indulging in the politics of envy
WHEN the Taoiseach went to visit snowstricken Wexford town last weekend (and if you’ve seen the videos, you’ll know Elsa couldn’t have done a better job when she built her ice palace in Frozen), he rather sensibly dressed to protect against the chill. When I saw photos of his jacket – a fairly ordinary quilted anorak sort of a thing with the look of a wearable duvet – I didn’t give it a second thought. Millions of men wear them every day.
Oh, how naive I was. Later in the week, People Before Profit Alliance TD Bríd Smith and Sinn Féin councillor Sarah Holland, who represents the Rathfarnham electoral area on South Dublin County Council, pointed out to their followers on social media that this was no ordinary jacket.
Briquettes
On Facebook, above a photo of Mr Varadkar, Ms Smith wrote: ‘Here’s something to think about when you get your heating bill for the last week. Leo’s jacket here. It’s a Moncler. On their website and in Brown Thomas, a Moncler jacket will set you back €600 to €700. That’s a lot of briquettes! One winter for the rich, another for the poor.’
Not to be outdone – because competition in the left-wing but right-on stakes can be exhausting, and picking a unique cause du jour often proves fruitless – Ms Holland weighed in on Twitter, saying: ‘The Taoiseach’s €600 jacket has divided opinion today.
‘Personally, I’m not a fan of conspicuous consumption and think the overpriced coat illustrates the divide between Leo’s Ireland and the average earner’s Ireland. Others think he should wear what he likes. Thoughts?’
Well, as it happened, lots of people had thoughts, just maybe not the one either woman was expecting. For starters, people rightly pointed out that it was entirely possible Mr Varadkar received the jacket as a gift. Mammies tend to be practical and, Taoiseach or not, Leo still is a son too; like, I was 37 before my mother stopped asking if I was wearing a vest. If Mrs Varadkar is just as concerned, maybe she bought it for her boy and stitched his name inside the lapel.
Even if she didn’t, and he bought it for himself, who knows whether he bought it in Brown Thomas? My own designer clobber days are long in my past and I’m more or less a Dunnes, Penneys and H&M man nowadays, but I still pop into TK Maxx occasionally and buy something nice. Just before Christmas, I needed a new dinner jacket. If Bríd and Sarah saw me in it, and it opened to reveal the Feraud label, they probably would paint me too as a member of some ephemeral globalist elite, metaphorically stealing briquettes from those in need, but their criticism would be equally misplaced.
For starters, it’s not Louis Feraud, in which case they actually might have a point, but the lesser-known Gianni Feraud (no, me neither) and not only did I not pay the recommended retail price of €350, I got it for 75 quid. I attend black-tie functions so infrequently that, assuming I stay at pretty much the same weight, the undertaker happily can slip it on me before he closes the lid, because it’s going to last forever.
Peelers
And, of course, the other possibility is even simpler. Leo is a regular visitor to the United States to see his partner Matt and, as anyone who goes to America surely knows, it basically is one giant factory outlet mall. I bought an Ermenegildo Zegna suit in an outlet there years ago for literally a quarter of the price I would have paid in Dublin, but Bríd and Sarah probably would have my cheap Italian wool collar felt by the Peelers for such ostentation.
Above all, though, the gist of the general response to the women, and rightly so, was this: honestly, have you nothing better to do? A few years ago, the Left was up in arms when Joan Burton, showing scant awareness of Labour’s traditional constituency, dismissed antiausterity protesters because some were waving expensive smartphones.
If such a gauche generalisation, tinged with a very strong whiff of hauteur, was seen as risible and offensive, what is so different about the inversion of the principle? Joan was bluntly told she shouldn’t tell people what they could or could not afford, but when the Left does it, that’s supposed to be fine? Well, sorry, I’m not buying that (and even if I were, it’s only 30 quid, Bríd and Sarah, I swear).
I’ll tell you a little story that maybe best illustrates how I feel about all of this. I was with a friend one day when we were approached by a homeless man. I had a fiver in my pocket and gave it to him. My friend turned to me and said: ‘He’ll only spend that on drink.’
‘That’s none of my business,’ I told her. The minute I handed over the money, it was his, not mine. I didn’t give it with conditions, and if he spent it on drink, that was his right. I don’t expect a reproachful tap on the arm when I buy a pint, and I don’t tell others how to spend their money.
Choice
When things heated up on Bríd’s Facebook page – and no goose down Moncler jacket could have reached that tog rating – she trotted out the old line about PBP TDs taking only the average industrial wage, a favourite canard among a certain cohort (‘canard’, incidentally, comes from the French for duck, also a fine source of feathers when you want to stay cosy), and passing the rest on to fund political campaigns.
Ms Smith taking home half her salary does not mean it is not paid in full. There is no saving to the Exchequer or to the taxpayer. In fact, a better way to put it would go like this: ‘I take half my salary and I spend the rest on campaigns.’
She exercises choice over what she does with her pay, and if that is to spend it on causes, and not warm jackets, fair play to her. I’m all for choice.
As for Sarah Holland, well, I’m really not wild about personalising politics the way she chose to, but since it’s out there, how much does her own party chairman Mary Lou McDonald spend every year on hair and make-up?
I have no clue, and I don’t want to. It’s absolutely none of my business, but if it’s anywhere near the price of a Moncler jacket, does that mean Sarah thinks it’s worthy of public scrutiny? That’s how illogical and petty this is.
Last week, I wrote about begrudgery, but this goes beyond that. It’s the return of what I thought was long in the past, the politics of envy, an attempt to ignite a class war. It’s like being in the students’ union room in college in the early Eighties, listening to Trotskyites bitching about the poshos.
It might feel good. It might feel clever. In truth, it’s neither, and both women got a short, sharp lesson in that this week when they roundly were derided. We care about bigger things than jackets, no matter how expensive they are.
What we certainly don’t need is a selfappointed Pricewatch Patrol hastily googling Moncler to try to score the cheapest of political points, even if proved about as effective as, well, throwing a feather at a dartboard.