Leo Varadkar is young to be Taoiseach, but old enough to know himself

In the packed Mansion House Roundroom last Friday, a couple of Leo Varadkar supporters did just what you’d expect when an election has been won — they lifted their man high into the air.

It’s not that the new leader of Fine Gael and Taoiseach-in-waiting grimaced, but it was just too easy to imagine his internal disquiet at being given the political equivalent of the birthday bumps. That was too much tactility and spontanteity.

Varadkar’s not, by traditional criteria, a natural politician, and yet he has won the highest political mantle in the land. The glad-handling, pint-buying, and flesh-pressing, which would mark out what Irish people recognise as a political animal, are not Varadkar’s forte. Sure, he’s been working on these things, on his own personal and political journey, to use the modern parlance, but they don’t come naturally.