Brendan O’Connor
Leo Varadkar is favourite among the bookies and the media to become the next Fine Gael leader, but his ascension is far from certain, says Brendan O’Connor
FOR many there is almost an inevitability about Leo Varadkar becoming the next leader of Fine Gael and thus, all things being equal, the next taoiseach. Even Leo himself seems to feel that momentum. We have heard very little out of him about his actual ministerial job over the last few months, but we have heard many leader-style pronouncements out of him, about the direction of the party and the government. At times he seems to speak as the de facto leader of Fine Gael, or as if he in some way embodies the party.
This contrasts starkly with poor old ‘earnest’, ‘boring’ Simon Coveney, who has been toiling away deep in the housing mess. When Simon has an outing, it usually involves listing off lots of facts and figures about what he is doing about housing. It’s all very worthy, but it’s not half as glamorous and exciting as Leo.
You wonder sometimes does Coveney feel like Frank Grimes, Homer Simpson’s foil in one episode of The Simpsons. Grimey, as Homer christened him, was a good man, a conscientious man, who did things properly. Homer was a messer, but everyone loved him. It drove Grimey crazy that Homer was rewarded for doing nothing, while Grimey never got rewarded for being a good man who does his job.
Does it frustrate Coveney, as he plugs away at the thankless housing gig, when everyone goes gooey over pictures of Leo slipping into the gym? Or when he hears that Leo was out again on Wednesday, whooping it up with backbenchers over pizza and beer, while Coveney struggled with what was, in the quaint times until recently, the most challenging issue facing the government, presumably then forsaking the pub to try to talk to his kids before they went to bed?
Star quality is an indefinable thing, and it’s not something someone can work on. It’s not something people deserve either. Some people just have it. And Leo has it right now.
And wouldn’t it be great if Leo was taoiseach? We’d feel so good about ourselves. We’d feel really modern and glamorous. A young handsome leader, and a gay one at that. Take that, anyone who ever suggested Ireland was backward and intolerant. Look at us now. It’s a long way from de Valera. There would no doubt be a feelgood factor around it for many, especially those of us in the liberal D4 Elite in Dublin. We would feel like a modern, young, forward-looking country that had finally thrown off the grey old men. And did we mention he is gay?
And isn’t it a sign of how modern we are that no one has even felt the need to mention it in all this discussion? Leo is being talked about purely on the basis of his merits. The fact that he is gay is an irrelevance in the modern Ireland.
Or is it? Less than two years ago, 40pc of voters voted against the introduction of gay marriage. Now good liberals like you and me know that those people don’t matter. They are dinosaurs, living in the dark ages, and their time is gone. That was the last gasp of the old, conservative Ireland. Right?
Except you’ ll probably find that a lot of those conservative old dinosaurs are Fine Gael supporters. And while they have, as they would see it, tolerated all this stuff about Leo being gay and the gay marriage thing, the idea of having a taoiseach who just happens to be gay, might be a bridge too far. All the things that some of us might see as positive and progressive about it — like sending our gay taoiseach off to meet Donald Trump, and having the taoiseach’s partner knock around with Melania — they might see as awkward. They might feel more comfortable sending ‘a family man’ like Simon out.
The things that some of us might see as liberating about Leo — the country being led by the son of an immigrant, someone with dark blood no less, who is also a member of a minority who were until recently prosecuted and persecuted, and who are still victims of prejudice — the 40pc might find threatening. It might be too much change for them, too quickly. Too much of a liberal takeover. We still haven’t even had a woman taoiseach, they might feel, and now we are going straight to the gays. How Leo’s sexuality will play to the grassroots is going to be something that will come to the forefront of people’s minds now. Fine Gael politicians support Leo primarily because they think Leo will get them votes.
If they think there is a chance he might lose them votes, they won’t be so keen. Even if the country is ready for a gay taoiseach, there are of course many doubts around Leo, like what Harry McGee called “a narrative of non achievements in various ministries”. McGee points out that there is a real danger that Leo could belly flop once he got into power. And there’s no doubt that Leo is very much an unknown quantity.
The new leader of Fine Gael, if he or she is taoiseach, will come to power at a tumultuous time. Never mind that the Government is a tenuous mess, there will also be months of a drip drip of revelations from the Charleton tribunal, possibly with a damaged Garda commissioner still in situ. Which certainly rules Frances Fitzgerald out of being leader. But is Leo’s perceived glamour what will be needed for that tricky task? Is Leo the one to keep the uneasy partnership with Fianna Fail going?
I keep coming back to Janan Ganesh’s recent observation about politics worldwide. It is relevant here too: “Populist propositions are about to be tested. By the time reality is through with them, a reputation for dull competence will be precious stock in politics.” Given where political fumbling and incompetence have got us recently, could Simon and his dull competence be the precious stock we need right now? Or indeed could Paschal’s dull competency be what people want? Interesting that after Paschal denied on both morning radio talk shows on Friday that he was thinking of running, Noel Rock came on Pat Kenny to say that while Paschal kept ruling himself out, other people kept pleading and trying to drag him back in. He would be seen by many in Fine Gael as a competent and solid pair of hands.
If the new leader of Fine Gael does not find himself dealing with being leader of a messy government, they will find themselves facing into a messy election. And this is where Fine Gaelers primarily see the value of Leo. The polls suggest he would bring in more voters than his rivals. That, along with job inducements, is going to be the deciding factor for most TDs. But then, election campaigns are funny things, and funny things become issues in campaigns. Ireland has come a long way since 1991 when Bertie didn’t run for leader of Fianna Fail after Haughey partly due to his marital status, with Michael Smith, a Reynolds supporter, quoted as saying: “People do like to know where the taoiseach of the day is living.” But still. A campaign casts a hard, uncompromising glare on everything and as we know right now, more than ever, in the privacy of the polling booth, people exercise all kinds of unacceptable prejudices. And while people assume that it was Leo who effectively brought gay marriage home, many others won’t forget that it was Coveney who actually managed that campaign, the only successful campaign that either Fine Gael or Labour has fought in years.
There has also been increasing annoyance with Fine Gael that Leo has been seen to be destabilising things in the background for a while now without making his move. Diligent Simon, on the other hand, has been impressing the old guard by first stepping in to help broker a Government after Leo nearly derailed discussions, and then getting stuck into the challenge of housing. The fact that Kenny’s demise is increasingly being seen by many in Fine Gael as the humiliation of a fundamentally decent man doesn’t help Leo’s cause either. Though Coveney was part of the pincer movement at the parliamentary party meeting that was thought to have ended it for Enda, it is generally accepted that Simon is the one who has been talking more to the Taoiseach and trying to facilitate a dignified exit.
Right now Leo is the favourite among the media and the bookies. But the media is often wrong and the bookies are only reflecting the money coming in, so basically they are working off conventional wisdom, which is wrong as often as the media. There’s a long way, and many convulsions and twists and turns to go here. But of course, all this is based on the notion that Enda Kenny is going to set in motion a leadership competition by stepping down. And with Enda, you can never be sure, can you?