Indifference and detachment will be key to Leo’s success as Taoiseach

In the great film The Last Mitterrand the dying protagonist and president of France identifies indifference as the critical quality required for leadership. It’s the necessary detachment — especially from friends and former causes.

Leo Varadkar doesn’t need just yet the depths of indifference François Mitterrand summoned with such regularity to ditch causes and dispatch friends. But it is a phenomenon of the Taoiseach’s office that you leave with fewer friends than you enter with.

“They hate me because I am a traitor. I was one of them. I know them well,” reminisced Mitterrand.