Gerard Howlin: For Leo, the magic is over

What is of lasting consequence is that Varadkar’s veneer is damaged. And that is the least-worst outcome, writes Gerard Howlin

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar. What has happened to the 'straight-talking' Varadkar is that he has allowed the public to see him gossiping. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, 

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole. 

Then mend it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, 

Then mend it, dear Henry, dear Henry, mend it.

Of course there is hole in the bucket, because leaks are essential air conditioning for government. They are the tidal estuary between secrecy and gossip. Transparency is only a recent, and not very effective phenomenon, among political principles and instincts.

President Woodrow Wilson made the abolition of secret diplomacy the first point of his Fourteen Points on the entry of the USA into the First World War. 

The French and British bribed Italy to enter the war on their side by signing the secret Treaty of London in April 1915 that promised Italy war spoils in Austria‐​Hungary, the Balkans, Asia Minor, and elsewhere. That was business as usual then, and not just in Italy.

The problem is that the operation of transparency in government is usually more about the displacement of responsibility, than the delivery of accountability. Freedom of Information has bleached away almost all frank official advice from the record. 

The little that is left is intended either to whitewash the facts or discommode the minister, rather like a diary, written for subsequent publication.

Most important political communications are verbal. Perhaps they always were. But it is ever more so now. Overlaying practice that seldom lives up to the principle it nods towards, is an ease of reproduction facilitated by modern technology. 

It may be administrative archaeology but word processors only became the norm in the 1990s. Before that, and it is in a working lifetime, carbon paper and typewriters were required. Printing was laborious and reserved for relatively important documents. 

The ease of WhatsApp and what-not to whirl things around, and even to send sensitive messages, was far in the future.

But it is a future that arrived for Leo Varadkar yesterday. It is today’s reception of what he said in the Dáil yesterday afternoon that will count. 

What will matter more, is what else arrives out into public view from inside the electronic ether. 

S/he who commands your electronic device, owns you. The ultimate issue for the Tánaiste may be, not what is in the public domain but in whose hands, what isn’t, is. 

There may not be malfeasance, or even sharp practice. It could just be the banter of insiders, unaware they were tapping out vignettes for the record. 

But in politics, like showbusiness, your public image must be vaguely consistent with the role you act out. The problem for Varadkar is that he self-projected as a straight talker. He had almost the status of a non-politician. 

His capacity to comment apparently from a disinterested distance, on affairs he was deeply responsible for, was as near to political transubstantiation as I have seen. The magic is over.

Secrecy is about power. That is why the Official Secrets Act is virtually inapplicable to anyone in a position of real authority. 

Written carefully it means that a disclosure of information, to use a less vulgar term than leak, if predicated on an official or minister acting in good faith, is, however-dubious, probably excusable. 

In any event that doesn’t arise for Varadkar. He was the Taoiseach and his disclosure of information was implicitly legal. It wasn’t the act, it was the artlessness of it.

In what is the essence of politics, the muddy mix between secrecy and gossip, between the confidential paper in the Taoiseach’s office and its gossipy circulation as a pretend-secret in the National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP) is the nub of the issue. 

Secrecy is about power. Whatever Woodrow Wilson might think, states need secrecy to function. 

The principle of cabinet confidentiality underlines that. Gossip, on the other hand, is the social arbitration of who is included and excluded. Those who share gossip are included, but those gossiped about, excluded. It is a power play and the main way in which secrecy is broken.

What has happened to Varadkar, is he has allowed the public to see him sausage making, and worse, gossiping. To misquote Bismarck, leaking like sausage making, does not bear being seen. 

He casually undermined his then minister for health Simon Harris, which given the transactional nature of politics, is unlikely to have disappointed either in their relationship. What is of lasting consequence is that Varadkar’s veneer is damaged. And that is the least-worst outcome.

If one threat is that more may emerge, another is what view the Green Party may arrive at. Its continued support, if forthcoming, can only be provided at the cost of deepening tension, in an already edgy internal party conversation. For now, Fine Gael continues on the basis of moral absolution from Fianna Fáil. It’s a topsy turvy world.

From last autumn to now is a shuddering comedown for both main parties in government, not least Fine Gael. Its Brexit bandwagon got them nowhere electorally. Varadkar, even when impressive and he frequently is, more frequently fails to arouse empathy. 

His misjudged attack on Dr Tony Holohan, just in time for an about-turn on the very issue of a Level 5 versus a Level 3 lockdown, and that on the back of months of sniping at hapless Fianna Fáil colleagues, is a pattern. He can now only sustain his own high poll numbers, by continuing to cannibalise Fianna Fáil support. 

Perhaps some of the green-fingered middle class will migrate back too. It seems set for a binary choice at the next election between Fine Gael and Sinn Féin. In a bizarre way, Varkadar’s mishaps cement Fine Gael’s role as the central plank of the government. Others are adjutants. 

He, not they, set the tempo. Hence the tension not over what has happened, but around concern instead that this is it. Proportionately, he may be using up more Green and Fianna Fáil capital in this escapade than his own. And that will suit him fine.

It is a principle, perhaps largely observed by neglect, that public policy should not be pursued privately. That is what happened when then-Taoiseach Varadkar gave a confidential paper to his friend Dr Maitú Ó Tuathail of the NAGP. 

The publication of a flurry of text messages is political revenge porn and an unedifying insight into what ideally should be mysterious acts of statecraft. But, of course, it is never thus. Containing the greed and ego of doctors, putting cabinet colleagues in their place by keeping them out of the loop, humouring friends, and the burden of being a taoiseach’s friend, is all too much for the mysterious or the sublime. 

It is rough work at the best of times. In this case, it was sloppy work as well. There will be less talk about straight talk after this.