‘Leo Varadkar & Simon Coveney: The Beauty Contest ‘ by Donal Lavery

I’m sure most of you are following the battle for the Fine Gael leadership and over who will become the next head of an EU ‘puppet government’ – made up of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. On the right, you are presented with Ireland’s own Margaret Thatcher, in the form of Leo Varadkar and on the centre-right you have the millionaire rural-guru Simon Coveney. The hustings to date, as the name suggests, has been an endless beauty contest between Tweedledum Leo and Tweedledee Simon, over who will get the reigns of office (without power). There has been relatively little debate about the economic inequality in Ireland or the Brexit process which will engulf the island for a decade.

Of course within a party like Fine Gael, I’m not expecting a Jim Larkin or James Connolly figure to emerge. It is, as one commentator opined, a case of two cheeks of the same arse. But sometimes in life you have to hope for bad rather than badder. The thing about Simon Coveney is that he actually seems like a decent enough person who would be more flexible in spending terms than his rival – giving the other Dail parties more clout. He is weaker in character and therefore pressure and criticism can be applied to twist his arm towards alleviating austerity.

Varadkar on the other hand, is much more dangerous. There are many of these capitalist liberal-types who seem to think it would be wonderful to have a gay Taoiseach in Ireland. I don’t dispute that Ireland has been an open air prison for LGBT people, but they aren’t going to get the kind of economic resources and emancipation that is required to address their circumstances by backing an explicitly right-wing ideologue like Varadkar. Many said how great it was to have a woman as Prime Minister of the UK in 1979, only to find how wicked and scheming that person was soon after. It mattered tuppence that she was female between the legs – for she governed like the most brutal man would have. So who the next Taoiseach sleeps with is really irrelevant to you in comparison to what he’s going to do to ordinary working people or communities. And I’m telling you that unlike Coveney, Leo Varadkar is ideological and advocates an agenda of sweeping privatisations mixed with war on organised labour. He probably sleeps with a photo of Ronnie Reagan on his bedroom wall.

Whatever statistics some Southern commentators may try to bend in their favour, this government has been a disaster. Unemployment has stabilised mainly due to mass emigration and tax-haven status for multinationals, not via their own policy efforts. Coveney and Varadkar have helped sacrifice generations of Irish youth on the altar of fiscal discipline while confining many to sheer homelessness, yet these gutter-tabloids make it out like they have been some kind of success? Either of these men will be pin-striped bandits in suits, beholden to the European Central Bank for the cut and thrust of their economic agenda. They are boot-shining boys for the Bundestag, devoid of the realities which ordinary working people face. All I can say is that it’s a pity both of them can’t lose.

But aside from that, one thing is for certain in all of this – there is going to be an early election soon in the Free State. Fianna Fáil have said they would be unable to facilitate Varadkar’s trade-union busting agenda and that the government is unlikely to last another year via confidence and supply. So it could be that Mr Martin (who equally stands for little) wants to catch Fine Gael off-guard sooner rather than later. My take on this is that we don’t need to simply have an election, we need to shed Ireland of a failed political class, in our determination to see this country prosper once again.