Varadkar’s first year sees political pendulum swing back to Fine Gael

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

Eight years ago I did a long interview with Leo Varadkar. It was the end of 2010; the economy was unravelling at a shocking place and Brian Cowen’s government was in the last month of a very turbulent and abysmal term.

Fine Gael itself had been through the ringer. Earlier, following a series of disappointing polls, a group of senior members had attempted a political coup against leader Enda Kenny.

They included most of the front bench; Varadkar amongst them. The then-31-year old tyro chose the wrong option though. His backing of Richard Bruton saw him on the losing side.

When I interviewed him he was reflective and a little more circumspect than he had been in the previous three years. Despite their opposition to his leadership Kenny had brought Varadkar and Simon Coveney back into his shadow cabinet, helping to salve the wounds of a bruising leadership tussle. For others though – including Lucinda Creighton, Denis Naughten and Brian Hayes – their career prospects within Fine Gael had come to a grinding halt.

Varadkar announced himself early. Within a week of being elected to the Dáil in 2007, the then 28-year-old went straight for Bertie Ahern’s jugular, excoriating the Taoiseach of the day for being “both devious and cunning”.

Back then I listed his attributes – confident, bright, articulate, hard-working, policy-oriented, clear-thinking, talented and ambitious.

But there was a second list of not so well-intended adjectives: arrogant, precocious, outspoken, full of himself, abrasive, insensitive and ambitious.

“He is so arrogant sometimes that it is unbelievable,” a Dublin-based colleague said of him. “His ambition rules everything he does.”

I wrote that Fine Gaelers had privately identified him, even then, as a potential future leader of the party.

Varadkar told me he was conscious that he could rub people up the wrong way and that it could turn out to be detrimental. “I acknowledge that, and am trying to be a bit more subtle,” he says.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.