On the one hand, it is perfectly understandable that Leo Varadkar’s legion of defenders – both those who are true blue Fine Gaelers, and those who are not, but who think the Tánaiste is unfairly targeted by his critics – should feel put out by the latest controversy engulfing their man. Yes, every single one of us is entitled to a private life. Every employee, even those at the top of Government, is entitled to time off. If the Tánaiste wishes to spend his at a music festival in London on his weekend off, then that is nobody’s business, and those attacking him for it are holding him to an impossible and unfair standard. It’s not an unreasonable argument. Indeed, Varadkar is not even in London primarily for a holiday – he is on a trade mission, and will also be in Paris and Berlin this week. Maybe he’ll take in a rave or two while he is there.
On the other hand, though, it is at least somewhat newsworthy that the second most senior politician in the country, and the leader of Ireland’s largest political party, is off in London attending a music festival on the very weekend that Ireland’s largest music festival would usually be taking place, had it not been cancelled as a result of the policies of Mr. Varadkar’s own Government. It is not unreasonable to ask why, if the Tánaiste feels safe enough to attend an event in London, maskless, with no limits on crowd numbers, Irish people must follow different rules at his behest.
The (thankfully, but too slowly, easing) restrictions on Irish people are in place, we are told, because it remains too much of a threat even for vaccinated people like Mr. Varadkar to mingle en masse, with no restrictions on their behaviour. Why is that true for all of us, according to Government policy, but not for him?
Politics, at the highest level, is not simply another job. A senior executive at a bank might set policies for the bank, but by and large he or she is not expected to set an example for the nation. The “leadership” part of the job is something that is almost unique to politics. We elect people not only to make policies, but also as people to lead us. Leadership means setting an example, and living by the same rules as you expect everybody else to abide by. The acts that infuriate us most, as a voting public, are rarely acts of incompetence, or even corruption. It’s the hypocrisy that gets us, most of all, and there is nothing wrong with that. When elected officials tell us things are not safe, and we must stay at home, it would be helpful if they acted as if things were not safe, and stayed at home.
The bigger problem with Varadkar though is not simply the hypocrisy. It is the lack of political awareness. These things do not happen in a vacuum. This latest controversy comes at a time when his party is convincingly implicated in a scandal about cronyism and favouritism in the failed appointment of Katharine Zappone as a free speech/LGBT envoy. Put this together with the homelessness crisis, the anti-social behaviour crisis, the economic crisis, the crime crisis, and the ongoing covid restrictions, and it is not hard to paint a compelling picture of a man who is fundamentally out of touch with, and lives a life completely different from, the rest of us. And that, more than anything else, is poison. Especially when your Government is opposed, as it is, by a party like Sinn Fein, whose whole schtick is that they represent the “ordinary people”.
Varadkar is, whether he knows it or not, cultivating an image as somebody who does not believe that the rules of society apply to him, or his party. He increasingly comes across as elitist, and aloof, and as somebody who understands very little of Irish life outside his own bubble of arty, liberal, middle class, disproportionately well off, urban dwelling friends. This is a man who talked in his leadership campaign about representing people who get out of bed in the morning, but who increasingly acts and behaves when off duty like a university student with a generous trust fund. More and more people just find that they cannot relate to him.
There is only so far that not being Sinn Fein, and not being Fianna Fáil, will take you. The immense anger at Varadkar is in many cases irrational, but if it looks and sounds irrational, it is because it is not only about policy. It is about something deeper. Left wingers who are inclined to worry about these things will say that the “something deeper” is bigotry about his racial heritage and sexuality – but that is nonsense. His racial heritage and sexuality were no impediment to winning the most votes at the last general election.
No, the “something else” is a growing sense with Varadkar that culturally and socially he is detached from the country – not “one of us” in any real sense of the word, and instead somebody who considers himself a class above, and apart from, the ordinary person. Stories like this do not help.
The criticism is fair, and understandable, and, since he is in politics, Mr. Varadkar really can have very few complaints about it. His Fine Gael colleagues, on the other hand, have every reason to complain.