Youthful Leo has old-fashioned attitude to women in politics

You cannot purport to be a modern leader, like Macron, and not prioritise women at cabinet, writes Alison O’Connor

LEO Varadkar did an incredible thing in his first week as Taoiseach — he made me feel sorry for Fianna Fail. He also gave me a pain in my uterus: His attitude to women smacked more of the François Mitterrand era than of the Emmanuel Macron one.

The best we can hope is that he has not started as he means to go on. Perhaps he believed there was nothing like a good row with the auld enemy to get the party grassroots — who voted 65% for Simon Coveney in the Fine Gael leadership race — onto his side. But his behaviour around the appointment to the Court of Appeal of former attorney general, Máire Whelan, reeks of old-fashioned political boorishness.