Speaking of stirring political rhetoric — don’t mention Leinster House

LEO Varadkar is extremely witty. To this I can testify, having seen him in action at the Trim Swift Festival at the weekend.

The festival celebrates the connection between the Meath town and Jonathan Swift, the satirist, dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral and author of Gulliver’s Travels.

Over the past few years Trim has, each June, brought together a collection of politicians, commentators and academics to take part in an event that really should not work. This even happens in the middle of the festival and takes the form of a dinner in the Knightsbrook Hotel, where a dozen big round tables are populated by guests who pay for the food and the fun — if any — to be found in conversation with politicians, commentators and academics until the moment comes when the reasonably well-known person at their particular table is handed a microphone and a four-minute time limit and allowed to express themselves about Swift, life, the universe, satire and whatever they’re having themselves.