Like a formerly great songwriter, Leo is desperate to regain his lost magic touch

Irreverent. Irrepressible. In the corridors of power

AS MICHEÁL Martin looked across the Cabinet table at Leo Varadkar mauling Government quarantine measures this week, he may have thought to himself: this fellow reminds me of someone.

The Taoiseach might even have recalled a story he told me over lunch in Leinster House once, one he felt encapsulated Bertie Ahern in his cunning, man-of-the-people pomp.

It went like this. Then-cabinet Minister Micheál Martin was honoured by a visit of then-taoiseach Bertie Ahern to his Cork South Central constituency. They embarked on a door-to-door canvass. Bertie was to show that although he was far from Drumcondra, he was still among his people.

They came to the house of a man with impaired vision, who told a story of appalling bureaucratic incompetence at the Department of Social Protection that had seen him lose his blind pension.

Bertie shook his head sadly and with that familiar hangdog expression said to the man: ‘I don’t believe that they could do that to you Mr [name withheld]. That’s a disgrace.’

And slowly Bertie’s head turned accusingly towards Micheál, as did the old man’s.

Bertie continued: ‘Ah jaysus, Micheál, what are youse after doing to this poor man. You’ll have to get it sorted.’

Micheál nodded his assent and took a note. As he backed away apologetically, Bertie was storming on to the next house, purposefully seeking another outrage against a supporter.

At the climax of the story, Mr Martin dramatically stood up from our table with a flourish: ‘This was the Taoiseach of the country, divesting himself of all blame, and blaming me!’ While he laughed heartily and his Cork accent shone through, you could sense a mixture of shame and admiration at the audacious deflection of blame by the Teflon Taoiseach.

His habit of behaving like a subtle commentator within government is baffling to observers

BERTIE was an enigma and I have made comparisons between him and Leo Varadkar in the past. Mr Varadkar employs the same rapier-like intuition that absorbs the views of the average person with great skill. Bertie, even as Taoiseach, gleaned his intelligence from industrial levels of street-to-street canvassing and over a nightly pint of Bass in one of his Drumcondra locals. Leo Varadkar uses social media and surprising enthusiasm for conversation with all sorts, that belies his introverted image.

But, Mr Varadkar is a political enigma in another sense. Sometimes, particularly in the last week, it has been impossible for allies and opponents to understand the pollical strategy behind his actions.

On Tuesday, the Tánaiste sat in the Cabinet room with the Taoiseach – most of the other Cabinet

Ministers were participating remotely. Those involved confirmed to me that the Tánaiste critically assessed the Government’s confused and vague Covid-19 quarantine policy. The following day he used the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting to critique the performance of the EU in Covid-19 vaccine rollout, notably its failure to go further towards obtaining the Russian Sputnik vaccine.

All these are legitimate criticisms, but only if the person voicing them hasn’t got a central role in Government policy formation. The Tánaiste plays a more central role than almost anybody else.

When Mr Varadkar was taoiseach last May, his minister for hHealth Simon Harris brought a memo to Cabinet proposing that the Government take action on all aspects of foreign travel in the context of Covid-19.

The memo, which was supported by the Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan, specifically asked that the practicality of quarantine for travellers be investigated. Ministers in that Government have confirmed that the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Justice and Business all presented barriers to action on foreign travel.

To our knowledge, Mr Varadkar, a doctor, has made no moves to revive quarantine or foreign travel restrictions since last May. Privately, he certainly believed last year that quarantine wasn’t practical. And Mr Varadkar and his Fine

Gael Foreign Minister Simon Coveney are the second and third most powerful people in Government when it comes to forming our interactions with the EU.

MR VARADKAR is the incumbent of one of the great offices of the State, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the department his Fianna Fáil hero Seán Lemass used to begin the modernisation of this State. He is in a vastly enhanced and empowered office of the Tánaiste.

Yet, he has reverted to a stereotype once attached to him by Fianna Fáil, that of ‘commentator’. Even more damningly, he appears to have assumed the role he filled in former taoiseach Enda Kenny’s cabinets, that of subtle fifth columnist within.

To me, this strategy makes little sense, for two reasons. Firstly, Mr Varadkar doesn’t need to agitate for advancement as he did under Mr Kenny, for it is already written in stone that he will become Taoiseach again in December 2022.

Secondly, it is a grave miscalculation to assume that the Fianna Fáil sector of this coalition will be wholly blamed by the public for the undoubted failings of the fight against the virus. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens will together reap the whirlwind.

After what is easily the worst year of his political career, it would be fair to say that Mr Varadkar’s confidence is cracked.

He reminds me of a formerly great songwriter who has lost the melody, the hit-making magic touch. Like Paul McCartney, who can’t recapture the glory of Eleanor Rigby or Hey Jude, he is going through a Mull of Kintyre phase. All the endeavour is there, but the ephemeral, mystic brilliance remains elusive.

Mr Varadkar is no longer the rising star or the Taoiseach, and in his desperation to recapture the spotlight he is making mistakes. The Fine Gael-created Woulfe controversy has one constant over the last two governments – Leo Varadkar.

The leaks controversy damaged him, and that too was a self-inflicted wound. His prime time TV attack on NPHET will haunt him for the rest of his time in public life.

But the eternal, inescapable arena of judgement for a party leader comes in a general election. Because of Covid-19 there has been no resolution to Election 2020. In political terms it might as well have happened yesterday as there has been no opportunity to purge the poison it created in Fine Gael.

It was Fine Gael’s worst election since 1948. Yet Mr Varadkar survived, prospered and will be Taoiseach again in 2022. There were glaring and fundamental errors in that campaign that require the leader to perform a rigorous and honest self-assessment.

The reversion to type in the last week augurs ill, though, and if that reckoning for the 2020 failure doesn’t come, there will be an unavoidable reckoning at the polls, next time out.