Leo needs to reassert what FG stands for. Those who get up early, yes, but his appeal must be wider

If Varadkar is not careful, he’ll have a very short reign

ON ELECTION result night in 2011 I found myself in the RTÉ television studios as an academic talking head. The operation was super slick with the centrepiece being a gigantic studio with three panels consisting of a constant rotation of politicians, party apparatchiks, political correspondents and the odd dull academic.

The big set-piece of RTÉ’s coverage on that cold Saturday night in February was taoiseach-elect Enda Kenny’s one-on-one sit-down interview with broadcaster Richard Crowley during which he famously said that Ireland was once again open for business and that his incoming government would keep people informed of the economic situation as ‘Paddy likes to know what the story is’.

As Kenny was being ushered out from that interview, I was waiting alongside a number of other people to be escorted into the studio. One of them was Leo Varadkar, who earlier that day had been elected to the second seat in Dublin West having just failed to reach the quota on the first count.

Kenny, although surrounded by a vast phalanx of RTÉ executives and Fine Gael personnel, saw Varadkar and immediately stopped. ‘Leo,’ he bellowed. ‘One day this could be you.’ Varadkar, shyly smiled and said: ‘Thanks Enda but today belongs to you.’

While I’m sure that neither man can recall the conversation, that exchange has stayed with me over the years. Only eight months after having survived a leadership heave against him in which Varadkar was one of the chief plotters, Enda Kenny had brought Fine Gael to its greatest election victory.

AS HE basked in the glory of this electoral success and fresh from a feisty interview performance where he rallied a country beaten down by austerity, Kenny took the time to offer words to Varadkar which at the time might have seemed far-fetched but this weekend are eerily prophetic.

As Varadkar himself now basks in the plaudits of his decisive leadership victory last Friday and is set to become taoiseach, it is well to recall that his victory was not one written in the stars.

In 2011, Varadkar had only been elected to the Dáil for the second time, had been on the wrong side in the leadership battle and had no guarantee he would be in a Kenny-led Cabinet. His close friend Lucinda Creighton wouldn’t make it, nor would the very able Brian Hayes. Both had to settle for junior ministries while Varadkar was promoted to Cabinet to serve as minister for transport, tourism and sport.

Six years later, Creighton has left political life after the failure of Renua, Hayes has been banished to the backwater of the European Parliament, while Varadkar at 38 is leader of Fine Gael and taoiseach-in-waiting. There has long been a presumption in Irish political circles that Varadkar is a rightwing ideologue. The dominant theme of the Fine Gael leadership campaign after Simon Coveney eventually woke up to the fact that there actually was a contest was to what extent Varadkar would push Fine Gael to the right.

As far back as May 2010, as a member of Fine Gael’s front bench, Varadkar described himself in a Hot Press interview as ‘centre right’, declaring that before you distributed wealth you had to create it. He insisted that a vast number of Irish people had a centre-right mindset and voted that way but couldn’t admit it because ‘right’ was seen as a bad word.

The economic crash and the austerity that it brought in its wake have changed Irish politics dramatically. The old certainties that tied people to political parties, particularly Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are gone. There is a new emboldened left.

Being ‘right wing’ is increasingly seen by people as supporting bankers and developers. Ireland’s two real experiments with right-wing parties have failed. The originals in the form of the Progressive Democrats were eventually swallowed up by Fianna Fáil’s chameleon-like ability to take its policies and dress them up in a nicer colour.

The pretenders in the form of Renua were rightly seen by the electorate as disaffected Fine Gaelers who had very little to offer beyond the talented Creighton, and a constant critique of the public service. Their obsession with abortion didn’t help either in a state becoming more liberal socially.

As he prepares to lead both Fine Gael and the country, Varadkar is fully aware of the fact that although many Irish people think in a centre-right way, they certainly don’t identify as such.

HE KNOWS that fairness was the dominant motif of the 2016 general election. He has only to look at the demise of his predecessor Enda Kenny to know of the dangers of misreading the public mood. He will also realise that he lost the vote of the ordinary Fine Gael membership decisively.

In that same Hot Press interview of 2010, Varadkar stated that the reason he joined Fine Gael was ‘values’, and that Fine Gael was the party which would tell people the truth even when they didn’t want to hear it.

In 2017, Varadkar needs to reassert what Fine Gael stands for. His instinctive sense that Fine Gael has to appeal to those who, as he puts it, get up early in the morning, will play well with those who think they pay for everything. The so-called coping classes.

But Fine Gael has always been much more than an appeal to this class. That is why Varadkar supporters such as Paschal Donohoe and Noel Rock are in the party. The conundrum Varadkar faces is how to live up to and espouse his centre-right values while ensuring that Fine Gael has a wider appeal.

It is clear by its own vote that the party’s membership consider it as more than a vehicle for the well-to-do, although their own hero Coveney is a card-carrying member of that caste. Coveney’s yearning for the Just Society and appeals that Fine Gael had to represent everyone in Irish society did strike a chord. It is a chord that Fianna Fáil strummed in the 2016 general election to significant success. It cannot be ignored.

The challenge for Varadkar is how to ensure fairness and equity in Irish society, while at the same time creating the conditions for a prosperous economy. If he cannot do it, he might find himself Ireland’s shortest-tenured taoiseach.

His chief rival, Micheál Martin, knows he has only one last shot at being taoiseach himself. One of them will force a general election sooner rather than later. That will play heavily on Varadkar’s mind in the weeks to come but, for now, all we can do is wish him well.