Arrivederci, Leo Varadkar
According to the newspaper’s on-line archive, the word “Lemass” did not appear anywhere in The Irish Times of 8 November 1966. On that day, Sean Lemass announced his intention to resign as Taoiseach. The following day’s newspaper was full of him, but already with a weather eye on who might replace him — as there was in today’s media before the paint had dried on Leo Varadkar’s announcement on 20 March of his imminent resignation.
Of the 15 men (note the gender exclusivity) who have passed through the office of head of government since independence, Sean Lemass was the first whose prospective departure came as a complete surprise. Leo Varadkar was the second.
Mr. Lemass served as Taoiseach for over seven years from 1959 to 1966. Mr. Varadkar served an unbroken spell of just under seven years as either Taoiseach or Tánaiste from 2017 until this week, the latter role in a coalition government where the office of Tánaiste was much more substantial, closer to Oliver Callan’s description of “co-Taoiseach” than nominal deputy Taoiseach.
Mr. Lemass resigned aged 67 and died less than five years later. At 38, Mr. Varadkar was the youngest ever Taoiseach when he took office. He is now 45. One presumes he has several decades of active life ahead of him.
If neither Mr. Varadkar’s intention to resign nor its precise timing were anticipated either by his colleagues or the media, the timing at least is understandable. It leaves his successor two months to gear up for the local and European elections in June and longer for the general election widely expected not to take place before the coming winter.
Mr. Varadkar could have waited to see how the elections go in June at the risk of either being harried out of office if his party did badly or obliged to stay through the general election if his party did at all reasonably — though perhaps more motivated to do so. His departure now does not suggest he was optimistic about June.
I am not going to offer a detailed appraisal of Mr. Varadkar’s political career, just some reflections on his time as Minister and Taoiseach.
He held three ministerial offices before becoming Taoiseach; Transport, Tourism and Sport (2011–2014), Health (2014–2016) and Social Protection (2016–2017). I wonder if any reader can recall any landmark achievement from that time that bears his personal hallmark? I certainly cannot. He occupied these offices but did not do anything much in them. This set the pattern for his service as Taoiseach.
Since the announcement of his departure, Mr. Varadkar is praised for two success stories from his first period as Taoiseach: his management of the initial stages of COVID from March through June 2020 and, more definitively, his management of the potential fallout from Brexit which were already a major preoccupation when he took over from Enda Kenny in June 2017 and remained so throughout those first three years as Taoiseach.
What both of those issues have in common is that they were forced on him by circumstances rather than chosen voluntarily. He could not get out of the way of either of them. Neither did he have full control over the direction they took. His management of them was necessarily largely reactive.
There is room for disagreement on how well he managed either or both, but only a committed curmudgeon would say that he handled them altogether ham-fistedly. In both cases, he showed a capacity for keeping the national ship away from rocks towards which it might otherwise have drifted.
What Mr. Varadkar never demonstrated, either as Minister or Taoiseach, was a capacity to steer the national ship deliberately and pro-actively towards a better place than it might otherwise reach if left to drift with the wind and the currents.
In the speech announcing his resignation[i], he made the case that the country is, broadly speaking, in a better place now than it was when he entered government. The case certainly has some merit, but it is equally certainly not beyond reasonable doubt or dispute. There are many areas of public policy where the government’s performance has been languid and less than stellar.
More important perhaps, how much of any improvement over the last 13 years is down to Mr. Varadkar’s personal commitment and intervention — or was he just “around” when it all happened? During that time, was there any major problem besetting the country about which Mr. Varadkar was passionately, as opposed to nominally, concerned and where his passion flowed through to radical action which effected real and positive change which might otherwise not have occurred?
For example, in his first address as re-elected Taoiseach in December 2022, Mr. Varadkar presented “housing” first in his list of “pressing challenges that will define the rest of our term”. In a subsequent interview with political journalists, The Irish Times reported Mr. Varadkar as:
…pledging to go “all out” to address the housing crisis, comparing the response needed to the kind of action seen during the Covid-19 pandemic…
We need to turn the corner on housing, it is an emergency, it’s affecting people in so many different ways.
“It’s holding us back as a country, and it’s causing intergenerational division that I don’t like to see.
“It’s really going to be a case of let’s do everything, unless there’s a really good reason as to why we can’t.”
The language suggests urgency and passion. The subsequent performance does not. Yes, the rate of home building has risen, but modestly rather than spectacularly and certainly not at the pace at which the need for them is rising. The government is ambling towards targets that are running away from them.
Perhaps they are still spooked by the dramatic collapse of the flimsily exuberant Celtic Tiger economy. But it has been almost as if the government are afraid to invest in Ireland’s continuing growth in case it is ephemeral rather than enduring, that they might be tempting fate to kick them. “Caution” has been the watchword when “confidence” might have been a better one. Playing lame catch-up rather than getting on top of things.
Of course, Mr. Varadkar would have liked to see “housing for all” realised. We all want to be chaste. But he was not committed to making it happen. See how easily Simon Harris can follow in the same vein, asserting a new target of 250,000 new houses annually from 2025.
Was that figure picked out of the air or perhaps the same source from which David Drumm of Anglo-Irish Bank used extract projections to soothe the Central Bank?
Words and aspirations are free and easy. Action and achievement require choices and commitment.
Was there any issue regarding which Mr. Varadkar had a zeal of equivalent intensity to Michael O’Leary’s ruthless cost management at Ryanair? Like him or loathe him, Mr. O’Leary understands the difference between effort and outcome.
Given Mr. Varadkar’s anonymous record as a Minister over six years, it is puzzling to a degree, that he was the front runner to succeed Enda Kenny as Taoiseach in 2017. It certainly didn’t reflect evidence of a capacity to get difficult things done.
Rather, it was down to the perception of him as having an “X factor”. He seemed to look the part.
Youth (with its superficial presumed implications of ambition; the desire to make a mark and the energy and vitality to do just that). His immigrant background in keeping with the prevailing zeitgeist of Ireland being modern country (divested of religious baggage and pale faced mono-ethnicity), integrated into a wider world rather than isolated and backward. And perception of him as a safe pair of hands. His anonymity as a Minister cut both ways. He didn’t do very much as a Minister but he didn’t slip up much either. And the last could probably fairly be said of his time as Taoiseach too.
Indeed, the backing for Simon Harris to replace him is a similar bet; even younger than Mr. Varadkar was, much more obviously energetic, the proverbial Duracell bunny (though how well that whirling Dervish energy is directed is another matter) and has survived a decent spell of ministerial office rather than achieved very much.
What both men also obviously had in common was a clear ambition to get to the top. Neither suffered any deficit of self-belief. Whether they had any idea what they wanted to do when they got there is doubtful. In his early days as Taoiseach, Mr. Varadkar sometimes gave off the slightly gauche air of amazement that so much had been granted to one so young, a bit like Charlie Bucket wondering how he got the golden ticket to Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory.
In a book reflecting on Irish Taoiseachs up to 1970, the late academic and broadcaster, Brian Farrell, divided them between two categories; chairman or chief. Mr. Varadkar slots firmly into the first category. He is more of a manager than a leader. And that is no dishonour or dismissal, even if there is ground for disappointment after the initial hype. In his defence too, it must be remembered that he was constrained by having to govern in conjunction with at least one other party; first in a government which was a mix of Fine Gael and Independent ministers which depended on a confidence and supply arrangement with Fianna Fáil and later at the head of a tripartite coalition. The archetypal “chief”, Eamon deValera suffered no such constraint.
Back to Sean Lemass for a finish. He governed in a quieter time. He frequently went home for his lunch and did not hang around the office in the evening. International travel was occasional rather than frequent. The media was less intrusive, inclined to deference if not reverence. Mr. Lemass’s Dáil seat was rock solid safe, Mr. Varadkar’s not quite so assured.
The demands on a Taoiseach now are relentless, media scrutiny permanent, multi-faceted, intense and reflexively critical, social media constantly buzzing and brutally critical. Some leaders are energised by the power and the prominence; Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, Bill Clinton. If Mr. Varadkar was too for a while, he has not given that impression more recently. Was his heart really in the recent referendum campaigns or was he just “phoning it in”? The obdurate failure of his party’s opinion poll ratings to rise from the doldrums can only have drained his enthusiasm.
When the job becomes a burden rather than a boon, if your heart is not entirely in it, it is time to go. Quitting must still have taken some courage and whatever relief it engendered would surely have been tinged with regret. He could surely have done better even if he might also have done worse.
[i] ‘I am no longer the best person for that job’: Varadkar’s emotional resignation speech, in full (thejournal.ie)
