Getting up in the morning is pretty basic you’d think. A bit Beckettian perhaps — like Andy Warhol’s reply about his greatest achievement: “I get up every morning.”
In politics, rising from slumber is apparently a powerful signifier. Last week, Irish Times political editor Pat Leahy mordantly remarked that Leo Varadkar intended “to revive one of his greatest hits — people who get up early in the morning”. As we know, when Leo first proffered the metaphor during the 2017 leadership race, it was more of a miss: he was roundly denounced. Right-wing, said the Opposition; tone deaf to those on welfare or workers on the long commute due to bad housing policy. “Choir boy,” said the internal opponents.
Leo swiftly put his “getting up early in the morning” idea to bed. Which was a pity, because the colourful epithet epitomised the coping classes or the squeezed middle, who had traditionally given their loyalty to Fine Gael and almost a third of whom, even in a disastrous election in 2016, had also given their vote.
But the ability to do an elegant U-turn is one of the marks of good leadership. And in the last two weeks Leo has waxed eloquent about “middle income, middle class people” who pay huge whacks of tax and don’t qualify for benefits. If you believe in karma, this was instant: within days he was up three points in the Sunday Times Behaviour & Attitudes poll.
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Still the low 20s — yes — but every point matters when you have an Opposition like Sinn Féin which only has to sit on its hands to rise in the polls.
Right now, on these islands, those who study these things see two leaders fighting for survival; Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar. Boris’s battle at least is in plain sight. Leo’s is hidden.
Sinn Féin jibes about the Garda “criminal” investigation into the doctors’ pay deal leaks have plunged a depth charge into Fine Gael. For some it just adds to their natural jitters. But it’s no secret that for others it is an opportunity to plot. Like Iago, they “follow” him in order to “turn on him” before he takes the prize of taoiseach.
Obviously, the “criminal” investigation causes anxiety, but it’s a process. Once instigated, the investigation has to take its course, the DPP will ensure justice is not rushed and the electorate can take comfort in the fact that Fine Gael, at least, believes in the rule of law.
The “leak” episode undoubtedly left a patina of lassitude on Leo. But there’s more. It’s not easy being tánaiste. Seconds-in-command always have a hard time of it. Like Dennis Thatcher and Prince Phillip, they walk deferentially behind the main act, always eschewing the limelight. It must have been particularly hard for Leo to step back having been, along with Normal People, our most exciting visual during the Covid hiatus.
But seconds-in-command can be movers and shakers too. Much of last week’s jubilee exuberance was the legacy of Prince Phillip who, by instigating the televising of the 1952 coronation, made the royal family central to British popular culture forever: the celebrations conveyed a sense of nationhood that the currently unravelling Brexit never did. The Queen’s Palace tea and marmalade sandwich with Paddington Bear was as much the point of Prince Philip’s dream as the imperial pageantry.
Unlike the Queen, Leo doesn’t really do bread and butter issues like housing, which resulted in terrible mistakes. His high handed stricture to young people desperate to get on the housing ladder to “borrow the deposit from their parents” was almost fatal.
Because Leo is at his best when he is high minded, making courageous stands.
Sergeant Maurice McCabe was excoriated for exposing malpractice in An Garda Síochána. Suspensions, ostracisation and a false allegation of sexual abuse culminated in the then Garda commissioner’s statement that his whistle-blowing was “disgusting”. Members of the Oireachtas took sides; there was a whispering campaign in certain quarters of the media. McCabe was a pariah.
Until one day, at a road safety conference, the Minister for Transport shouted stop. Leo Varadkar stated publicly that Sgt McCabe’s behaviour was “better described as distinguished, not disgusting”.
The tide turned for McCabe. People trapped by political events resonate with Leo Varadkar.
In 2014, tánaiste Joan Burton and her assistant were held captive in a car at a water protest in Jobstown in Dublin. For three hours they were rocked, mocked, insulted and assaulted by a mob. Burton was hit twice, drenched by a water balloon. The protest was remarkable for the presence of Paul Murphy Solidarity TD, who was filmed leaning against the car. When, acquitted of conspiracy to kidnap the women, Murphy complained in the Dáil about Garda behaviour, Leo Varadkar delivered a coruscating oration on the nature of justice and victimhood.
“You’re not a victim,” he said. “You got a fair trial ... and it may well be the case that you weren’t engaged in kidnapping but it was thuggery and your behaviour was wrong.”
On and on he went, counterpointing Murphy and the “ugly, violent protest with two women going about their work”. Murphy should apologise to them, he said, but also “to the young people who should not have been led in that sort of protest”.
It was one of his finest hours. You wouldn’t think of Varadkar as Churchillian, but freedoms threatened, individuals wronged, brings out the best in him.
There are crises coming. The people who get up early are not exempt. And courageous politicians are rare enough.
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