The thing about Varadkar’s Ireland is that it only ever likes to compare itself to de Valera’s Ireland. That, as most people know, was an Ireland that ended more than half a century ago.
The obsessive need to keep referencing a bygone Ireland might also help to explain why the electorate is now being asked to vote on amending and deleting parts of Article 41 of de Valera’s 1937 constitution.
The thing about always wanting to compare yourself to a country from nearly 90 years ago is that you usually get to feel morally superior. Most countries today are materially better off than they were nearly a century ago; most like to think of themselves as being more enlightened and most don’t use archaic language. That’s as true for Ireland as it is for most other countries.
Yet, Irish political culture alone seems to be obsessed with this flawed methodology. You don’t generally hear English, French or Dutch politicians insisting that politics in 2024 has to be viewed through the prism of the 1930’s.
Indeed, given their far more traumatic history you would have to wonder what German, Spanish and Italian politics would look like today if they adopted the standard Irish liberal political methodology. It says much for the provincialism of political culture in contemporary Ireland that liberals still like to think of Ireland as being one of the most oppressive countries in 20th century Europe.
The problem with basing today’s political narrative around the political culture of a country of 90 years ago is that all sorts of unwanted skeletons of your own also tumble out of the political wardrobe. The great bogeyman of Varadkar’s Ireland is the far right. It’s strange then to learn that Eoin O Duffy, the first leader of Fine Gael in 1933, was probably the closest that Ireland has ever come to actually having a far right political leader.
That’s something the Fine Gael spin department are unlikely to be tweeting about – they’re now more pre-occupied with trying to connect the party to Michael Collins although he was dead for 11 years before the party was even founded. It’s another matter entirely as to what a nationalist like Collins would make of Varadkar’s Ireland.
That’s the historical context to what we are once again witnessing – the wheeling out of a flawed historical methodology which is asking the Irish electorate to compare Varadkar’s Ireland with the Ireland of 1937.
Everyone will immediately recognise the rehearsed tropes involved in trying to frame the upcoming referendum in terms of ‘a woman’s place being in the home’. The problem with that is that Article 41.2 categorically does not state that. That’s also the view of Supreme Court Justice and Chair of the Electoral Commission, Marie Baker. However, it remains to be seen if an army of government spin doctors and NGO big wigs can convince the public otherwise.
Varadkar’s Ireland looks impressive when you compare it to a poorer Ireland from the early to mid 20th century. But then, so too do most countries when you apply that same flawed methodology.
What Varadkar’s Ireland should really be compared to is other similar sized countries of today or indeed, itself. When you judge Varadkar’s Ireland on its own merits rather than through the skewed lens of an Ireland from the last century, what you see is a country unravelling at the seams.
In a country supposedly awash with money, no one needs reminding about the ongoing crisis in housing, health and illegal immigration. The recent admission that the cost of the National Children’s Hospital will now hit €2.25bn gives some indication of the true level of incompetence evident at the heart of government in Varadkar’s Ireland.
This is now a country where a lot of young Irish people see their future in places like Australia or Dubai rather than Varadkar’s own much trumpeted and increasingly dysfunctional progressive Ireland.
But it’s not just those young Irish nurses and doctors in Australia who no longer believe in the entity that is Varadkar’s Ireland. With about 25% of Varadkar’s own Fine Gael parliamentary party already indicating that they will not be seeking re-election, it is clear that there is widespread disaffection within Fine Gael at the direction the party has taken under Varadkar.
This is now a political edifice largely held together by spin and carefully timed press releases invariably referencing the mythical far right, the great bogeyman of Varadkar’s Ireland.
The latest iteration of Varadkar’s Ireland sees a spin campaign which seeks to prompt the Irish electorate into saying yes to a vague liberal word salad whose only practical outcome will involve the deletion of the word ‘woman’ from the constitution and the introduction of legal ambiguity around the term ‘durable relationship’.
Yet for all of the spin and the throwing of liberal shapes, the thing about Varadkar is that he appears to be detached from the political office he occupies. Equally, he appears detached from his parliamentary party and, most of all, from the Fine Gael grassroots or more correctly, what is now left of the grassroots of what was once a national party.
In fact, you would have to say that if the Fine Gael TD for Dublin West was unseated in the next general election, he might not even be particularly troubled about it. All of which points to an even more worrying thought – perhaps Leo Varadkar doesn’t believe in Varadkar’s Ireland either.