In 2010, he said he wouldn’t serve on a Fine Gael front bench with Enda Kenny as leader.
He has consistently gambled on the easy short-term option, and until now he hasn’t paid the price for it. At the heart of his actions lies a certain immaturity, and dare I say it, lack of confidence. He will probably survive it, just, and limp on for a while but Fine Gael is not historically a forgiving party of leaders that lose elections - and it now looks like we will have an election soon, even if not at christmas. Varadkar’s recent conduct and handling of the crisis has put the first nail in his political coffin, rather early into his premiership. How Leo Varadkar didn’t see this mess as entirely preventable, and something to prevent in the future, beggars belief. In the end, Kenny deflected attention from the mess with his long walk to retirement. She had already made costly errors in the Dáil earlier in the year, critically destabilising Enda Kenny and creating a “divergence of memories” which really should have seen either herself or Katherine Zappone, Minister for Children, leave government. It was a huge gamble to keep Fitzgerald in the cabinet, but to keep her on as Tánaiste was frankly foolish. Most obviously, it required that he retain the unreliable, and un-ministerial, Frances Fitzgerald. It was a short-term strategy and, and as we now see, an untenable one. It seems likely that this indeed was the case, given the government he assembled. If he is so lacking in leadership qualities, however, how did he martial such overwhelming support from TDs, Senators, MEPs and Councillors? The charge at the time was that he’d promised jobs to everyone. For each one of the veterans he kept on, the keen observer needn’t try to hard to see the cold calculation. He largely kept the personel of Kenny’s government, and those new appointments haven’t been very successful - such as a bullish Housing Minister who has achieved nothing. The result is that so far there has been no overarching vision from the government, and there is a malaise among the people, of non-confidence in the government to do anything about the great problems that face us. In appointing his Government, Leo was tactical on very obvious and shallow level. The biggest failing of Leo’s social media offensive is that there isn’t really anything impressive to report. She can’t shoot the video and have nothing to say. This is ultimately quite a good thing, as she is forcing upon herself a certain level of accountability.
COFFIN GAY PRIDE NAILS HOW TO
Incidentally, Jacinda Ardern, the new Prime Minister of New Zealand, is schooling everyone on how to do this at the moment, with a clearly rather expensive but also wonderfully personal video shoot each day. Politicians don’t get much media exposure really, and when they do it is entirely combative, and usually not interactive - so it is better sometimes to try something else. His tweets are an attempt to connect a bit more. But that’s PR, and they don’t always get it right. Sometimes he hasn’t seemed very statesman-like, such as his ‘Love Actually’ moment with old colonial Albion.
He shows off his socks to appear likeable, he goes jogging with Trudeau and they attend Pride festivals together. He has spent the intervening period since his appointment making friends in the Axis of Hipsters - Macron and Trudeau and now perhaps, from the left, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand. I think it is the latter, despite the fact that I would not be surprised by the former. (1) He is so rabidly right-wing that he wants the state to lose all capacity to solve society’s escalating problems (2) He hasn’t got the leadership qualities for the job. There are two possible explanations for this. It seems now that Leo’s qualities as a leader are curiously lacking. The appointment of a half-Indian gay Taoiseach was at once a sign of how far Ireland has come, even though it took an exception of political fortune to achieve it, and also a particularly bad moment for progressives looking for a reforming figure at the top - because no-one could really accuse Leo of being centrist. Leo never really had the stones to be Taoiseach, and now he teeters on the brink.Īn Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar’s selection by Fine Gael politicians, over the wishes of their members, meant something for Ireland.