Let big-mouth Leo talk himself out of a ministerial job

Sunday Tribune, 13 June

Leo Varadkar's nephew is my godson.
I just want to get that out of the way before someone discovers it and tries to suggest that I'm a secret Leo supporter. Nothing could be further from the truth. I would never vote for Leo. I am not a fan.
That said, I want to make it clear that I'm talking about Public Leo. He comes from a lovely family and I hope they understand the following is just business.
Last week, Leo was back stirring the pot and annoying potential allies. During a Private Members' Bill debate, he tried to pick a fight with Labour – now the state's most popular party. He said they were ideologically closer to Fianna Fáil on government spending than Fine Gael were.
I wonder if Leo would sign my copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. I'd make a fortune on eBay with it.
On Tuesday, Leo the Lion got a mauling from Olivia O'Leary in her Drivetime column. She started by calling him "a really smart 10-year-old: bumptious, unsquashable and really delighted with himself – and confident that everyone else will be too." This was going to hurt.
O'Leary said that when right-wing Leo starts "throwing ideological stones", political problems arise. Enda needs to rein him in if Fine Gael are to successfully woo Labour.
Ask anybody in Labour, she said, which Fine Gaeler gets up their nose most and they will say US Republican-wannabe Leo (followed by John Deasy and Lucinda Creighton). Come the day of reckoning, with Labour and Fine Gael frontbenchers jostling for portfolios, Leo the Lion may have to lie down with the lambs in the backbenches.
Leo knows Labour can't stand him. So did he heed O'Leary's sound advice and exercise some diplomacy? Of course not. He did what any bumptious 10-year-old would do: he posted a comment on social networking site, Twitter. "Someone send Olivia O'Leary a Labour Party membership application. She's let the mask slip once again." You could almost hear him stamping his foot.
Leo's use of Twitter may mirror his political personality. As of noon last Friday, he had 762 followers on the social networking site. He only follows 12 people himself (his apostles?). Leo leads, you follow.
Since joining in February, Leo has not tweeted directly to any of his followers. Leo talks, you listen.
We know his views on just about everything. Over the past few weeks he's been popping up everywhere from right-on Hot Press to on-right the Sunday Independent Life magazine.
We know that Leo is an ideologue. "I would be free-market centre right," he told the Sunday Independent, adding that Bismarck was his hero.
We know that Leo doesn't do clinics. He sees them as a waste of time. "Lots of people don't understand what the role of a politician is." I think you'll find they might, Leo.
We know where he stands on immigrants. Olivia O'Leary mentioned that Leo once suggested that unemployed immigrants be paid to go home. That was actually a cheap shot. Leo wasn't calling for deportation. The EU backs that plan: it has granted Ireland €600,000 from its Return Fund to help hard-up immigrants go home.
We know where Leo stands on drugs. He admitted to Hot Press that he has smoked cannabis. Whether this is really an 'admission' in politics any more is doubtful. Some might see it as a way of "getting down with the kids". As the political equivalent of wearing your baseball cap sideways. It's at odds with his assertion in the Sunday Independent that he's "always been 30".
We know where Leo stands on abortion. He told the Sunday Independent he's against it. He says he's not religious but would "accept a lot of Catholic social thinking". He didn't mention contraception, homosexuality or divorce though.
Leo said he was not in favour of legalising abortions for victims of rape.
Stop there.
What if the woman had been raped by her father, like Barbara Naughton was, from the age of nine until she was 18? Would he have denied Barbara the right to abort? Barbara has called his comments "ludicrous".
In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled a woman had a right to an abortion if there was "a real and substantial risk" to her life. What if that risk was from the victim herself? Should she not be protected from suicide? Leo believes this would lead to abortion on demand. The next step, he says, would be aborting babies with disabilities. Where does he think he's living? Nazi Germany? Does he really think we'd start aborting disabled babies?
You could dismiss Leo as just another US Republican-wannabe, if there wasn't a chance he might some day be a minister. Do we want another minister with right-wing Catholic beliefs? Remember how Bertie Ahern enabled the church to cap compensation for abuse victims?
O'Leary said in her column that when there's a coalition on the horizon "a smart politician plays down ideological differences. Leo, however, can't stop waving the ideology flag". Maybe Leo thinks he's smarter than he actually is. I hope so. I hope he keeps annoying Labour – so we won't have to suffer him as a minister. I hope he keeps roaring like a lion king – and never gets within an ass's roar of the throne.

dkenny@tribune.ie

June 13, 2010