How Leo is better for finding love in his life
‘Leo was a loner and shy, yet obnoxious’
ONE of the defining images of Election 2007 was provided by the RTÉ series Naked Election where, after a day of canvassing, Leo Varadkar returns to an obvious bachelor pad, alone – to nothing more attractive than a microwave meal.
It was a scene which would inform a slew of, retrospectively excruciating, queries by interviewees over whether Leo had met a nice girl or not.
Leo would always dismiss such queries in the same half-hearted manner so many gay men have in the past, with oblique mutterings about work.
In fairness to those who asked, most were guided by a sort of maternal instinct for a man who seemed to need a bit more joy in his life. And since then, that drab featureless kitchenette has been replaced by a happier equally iconic image of Leo on the sun-kissed day of the gay marriage referendum result, walking proudly with a rainbow flag draped across his shoulders.
The new Fine Gael leader, correctly, refuses to let his sexuality define him, but Leo’s personality has changed in a subtle – but critical – way since that interview with Miriam O’Callaghan, in January, 2015, in which he public
ly spoke of being gay for the first time.
Of course though he still lives in that apartment, Leo occupies a very different space now after a long journey.
One of the more intriguing features of the initial campaign sparring was the sudden interest the Independent News and Media group showed in the lovely wife and family Simon Coveney had and the absence of the same in the case of Leo.
Ironically, the matter appears to have acted as a catalyst for Leo to become completely transparent about his partner, Matthew Barrett, a surgeon.
Not since Albert Reynolds, has anyone spoken with such obvious warmth about a partner.
‘Matt is just a very special person... the kind of person who has made me a better person. Matt is definitely cleverer than me. Which, occasionally, I can find intimidating. He is very, very intelligent. He can read faster than me. He can do calculations faster than me. He is very bright.’
It isn’t a cloying relationship with Leo saying: ‘He has his career and I have mine.’
Leo has no plans to bring Matthew to State occasions, on the grounds that they’re not married, but Matthew, he said, does attend the odd event. Like most Irish men, Leo is even more uneasy at the prospect of marriage noting: ‘We’ve never discussed it. So it is not on the agenda. It is only two years. Not even two years!’ In his earlier life, Leo was an outsider who, despite residing in a world of insiders, was out in the cold.
Even within Fine Gael, despite his utterly middle class persona down to the private school in Castleknock, he was the quintessential outsider. This even applied to his career in medicine where contemporaries of the time said ‘his heart wasn’t really in it, he always seemed to want to be somewhere else’.
The ‘somewhere else’ was, of course, Fine Gael but even ‘within that circle he was a loner who was shy yet obnoxious at the same time’. Sources from that time recall: ‘He would sometimes try to be nice but it took a lot of effort and often, after a few pints, he had a tendency to be rude and to offend.’ All that changed once Leo felt free to be himself.
Happily, the soon-to-be Taoiseach’s partner appears to be as impressed by Leo as Leo is with him. Friends of both note: ‘Matt is a little in awe of Leo, he is only 30, some people think he’s a little young for someone as demanding.’ Leo has evolved
into a quasi hipster millennial who understands there is a life after politics, goes voluntarily to Electric Picnic, is vain about losing two stone and drinks coffee from Guatemala.
The new Taoiseach’s persona has changed in other ways, too.
He used to define himself by what he was not and he was not a lot of things. He admitted he was not a sporting person or a people person for that matter. Now, he togs out for the Oireachtas rugby team and attends sporting occasions of his own free will. Of course being nice to people still requires a level of effort and training. However, although he still lives in that same apartment of 2007, he also lives in a far more nuanced place now and, in politics, that is a good news