CUPCAKES AND CUTTING ATTACKS, IT’S ALL PRIDE IN THE NAME OF LEO V

IT’S a wonder that Bono, Leo’s new best friend and admirer, didn’t warn the Taoiseach in New York about Pride (in the name of Leo V).

There was the U2 frontman telling the world that Ireland deserved a place on the UN Security Council because we are, as a people, essentially humble in our hearts.

But evidently the Taoiseach was irked at being asked by the Irish media if the expensive and elaborate push for a seat at the world’s top table was something of a vanity project.

Questions about how he had canvassed Michael Lowry – convicted last week on tax offences – for support in the Dáil vote for Taoiseach last year also appear to have rankled.

No, no, not at all – the man who wants to double our global footprint has no personal interest in hanging out like a groupie with international leaders, despite all the photographs you’ve ever seen since he ascended to power.

Thus he likely took that little niggle and affront into his closed-door meeting with Irish luminaries in the Big Apple.

Here he is, a prince among potentates (young, good-looking and with a gym bod, don’t you know), a tall poppy – since popularity is everything – being blackguarded by begrudgers.

Of course, media criticism and questioning goes with the territory, but Leo’s instinct to perpetually play to the gallery came ironically into play.

This time he wasn’t using the press, but abusing it – thinking he could indulge his pique in the safe haven of Donald Trump’s America.

And of course, he previously sucked up to the president at the Speaker’s lunch on Capitol Hill back in March, making up a story about meddling in the planning process on behalf of the Donald’s Doonbeg development.

That certainly didn’t play well to a domestic audience, puncturing the Fine Gael leader’s obsessively groomed public image as a right-thinking opponent of stroke politics and a politician who really tells it like it is.

NOW he has channelled a Trumpist tendency again, surprising a private audience with his sneers at the Irish media and political journalists in Leinster House.

It’s also, of course, all a tad rich coming from Leo, a man who largely rose without trace, borne on the gossamer wings of glowing press coverage because of his very willingness to sound off.

He assiduously courted the press when he needed it.

Remember those cupcakes for the media during the Fine Gael leadership contest? Slagging off the press posse may not amount to much in itself – indeed hoary old hacks like myself are delighted to kick this story up and down the plinth at Kildare Street – but there is a wider consideration that is of importance to voters, and thus to Leo himself.

In essence it’s the story of the slipped mask.

Does the Taoiseach belong to the long list of people who say one thing in public and another in private?

Does his fondness for being liked by the powerful mean that he would, in an extreme case, sell your rights and concerns down the river in order to remain best buddies with the Bilderberg group and those who do Davos each January?

Is he (as this may be gratuitous retaliation) another Tony Blair in waiting?

Leo rang the New York Stock Exchange bell, and in so doing rang a bell of remembrance about media baron Denis O’Brien applauding another Fine Gael taoiseach at the same ceremony in 2012.

Mary Lou McDonald conjured that name again yesterday over media domination in Ireland... and of course, it is inextricably linked with former Fine Gael Minister Michael Lowry, lately convicted of tax offences, with whom the current Taoiseach has an ‘understanding’.

Politicians need, and ravenously desire, a ‘good press’ and there are stray signs that could cause a citizen misgivings, if they should care to peer behind the scenery.

The New York incident offers just one tiny glimpse.