Leo: the whys and the what next?

Now that Leo Varadkar has stepped down, there are at least three obvious questions:  why,  who will succeed him as Taoiseach and what will Leo do next.

The first – why did he tender his resignation – remains a mystery. He gave no leads on that, other than saying that he believed somebody else would do a better job of leading Fine Gael. Which is sheer bunkum. Was there ever a politician that didn’t think s/he could do twice as good a job as anybody else? Under-evaluation of their talents is not something you see much of among politicians.  Leo’s words were that it was for “personal and political reasons”  he resigned. There are plenty of rumours swirling around. Maybe he saw something nasty in the woodshed. Maybe, like so many Tory MPs – and to a lesser extent in Leo’s own party – he figures it would be better to go out on a high than take a political mugging in the coming elections. But note how he put “personal” before “political”. Maybe we’ll never know. And when you think about it, is it any of our business? The guy is no longer public property.

Who will succeed him? Simon Harris, Minister for Further and Higher Education,  is the bookie’s favourite. I think there’s little doubt about Harris’s intelligence; there might be more question over his charisma and his warmth. Certainly standing behind Leo yesterday, he looked like death warmed up – or perhaps it was a trick of the light. Anyway, if Fine Gael go through with it and elect him leader, I  predict he’ll be only a shadow of the man he succeeds – not to mention the Sinn Féin leader he’ll face across the Dail.

As to what Leo will do next, there are a lot of avenues. He said he had “no definite plans”, which means he has plans but he hasn’t finalised them. A big job in Europe? He’d fit very neatly. In the private sector? There must be lots of firms who’d be delighted with the prestige, not to mention the knowledge bank he’d bring with him.

In any case, isn’t everyone entitled to a mid-life crisis? It’s just that Leo has had to do it in the public eye.

Unionist politicians will be delighted to see him go, which may say more about them than him.  But on the international stage, a gay non-white Fine Gael  Taoiseach will, like teenage dreams, be hard to beat.