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If you were to go through Leo Varadkar’s career and pinpoint all the controversies in which he has been involved, then some high percentage of them would be due to a common factor: His chronic inability to keep his mouth shut.
He was at it again, yesterday, opining about the alleged imcompatibility of the UK Conservative Party conference with the principles laid out in the Magna Carta:
TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR has said he is concerned about some of the language emanating from the Tory conference over the past few days in relation to human rights.
Asked today if he was concerned by some of this language, Varadkar said that he was:
I am to be honest, the Britain, the United Kingdom that I love and admire is the country of the Magna Carta, the country that founded parliamentary democracy, and the country that helped to write the European Convention on Human Rights.
An Taoiseach added that he felt the UK was retreating from international co-operation.
In the first instance, Magna Carta is a strange document to refer to in the context of modern human rights, being as its purpose was to enshrine the rights of British Barons, rather than the common people. One might have hoped that British society would indeed have moved on from a document that, in clause ten, excuses the non-payment of interest on loans taken out from Jews, for example.
But more importantly than that, it never seems to occur to the Irish Taoiseach that he has no role or right to comment on domestic UK politics, and that doing so is likely to have diplomatic repercussions and, besides that, a negative impact on Irish-UK relations. Indeed, one might only imagine what the reaction would be in the perfumed parlours of Dublin High Society had Boris Johnson, in his pomp, levelled a criticism at the Irish Government for their rhetoric on various subjects ranging from Northern Ireland to our historic support of Argentina over the Falklands. If the Taoiseach wants to become a commentator on British politics, then one hears that there are recent vacancies at GB News.
Further, on the substance, there’s a fair chance that the Tories are more in line with the opinion of a large swathe of Irish society than Mr. Varadkar is. For example, he might not like to find out how popular with many Irish voters the idea of restricting the right to claim asylum is, or where they stand on Rishi Sunak’s assertion that men cannot become women, and vice versa. In fact, on all these issues, though the UK conservatives are polling abominably at large, polls suggest they are much more in line with UK public opinion than Mr. Varadkar is.
It is also, I fear, a strategic error to link human rights to ideas that are deeply unpopular: If “human rights” and “engaging with the world” are inextricably linked, for example, to endless immigration and practically open borders, then Mr. Varadkar might find that he is tarnishing those concepts rather than burnishing them – something that, irony of ironies, he seemed to recognise himself in another outburst of commentary yesterday:
Speaking at the European Political Community meeting in Granada, Spain, Mr Varadkar said countries will be able to accept migrants who are already in other parts of the EU or make a “financial contribution”.
He said Ireland has taken in over 100,000 migrants over the past two years and struggles to house them.
“You can have the option of accepting refugees who are in other parts of the EU, so they’re already in a safe place, or you can make a financial contribution,” he said.
“Realistically, where we are in Ireland at the moment, having accepted over 100,000 people from Ukraine and other parts of the world in the past two years, I don’t think we’re really in a position to accept more voluntary transfers, not until we get on top of the accommodation situation.
So here he is, on the one hand criticising the UK’s politicians for not wanting to take more refugees, while at the same time floating the idea of paying other countries so that Ireland need not take any more refugees. The Roman God Janus, famous for his many faces, had nothing on this guy.
And this is how it goes with him: He cannot, will not, and shall never just shut up and get on with the job. Every time he chases a headline, he creates problems and expectations for himself and his Government that he cannot deliver, or perhaps had no intention of ever delivering. Just ask those of us who get up early in the morning.
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