Paul Murphy is not the only member of the Dail who takes no prisoners. Neither does Leo Varadkar, at least not in his increasingly bitter war with the left.
It started on June 27 with a dissertation on socialism and how the Bolsheviks, the new taoiseach said, had “put people into gulags, set up a secret police [and] led to the ending of democracy”. Venezuela and Cuba got a swipe too for being oppressive “regimes [that] style themselves as left-wing” and to which the Irish left “turn a blind eye”.
The next week, Varadkar warned Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein’s deputy leader, not to spread false information and “exploit” people’s fears about proposesd bin charges, in a thinly-veiled reference to the anti-water charges protests.
Last week, all out war erupted when Murphy said Varadkar had, in the Dail the previous day, repeated an allegation made by three garda witnesses, which was shown to be untrue, in the Jobstown trial when he and five other men were acquitted of falsely imprisoning Joan Burton, when she was the tanaiste, and her adviser Karen O’Connell.
“Words designed to portray a menacing crowd,” said the Dublin South West socialist. He wanted an inquiry because he believed “numerous gardaí lied under oath” and, it appeared to him, had perjured themselves.
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As the government benches exploded in uproar, the taoiseach rose, calmly eye-balled Murphy across the chamber, and told him: “You are not a victim here. .. You had a fair trial and you were acquitted, but that does not mean that your behaviour was right. It may well be the case that the deputy was not engaged in kidnapping, but it was thuggery and your behaviour was wrong. . . . Instead of trying to present himself as the victim and demanding a public inquiry, what the deputy should do now in the house is offer a public apology to deputy Burton and Ms O’Connell.”
“I am not the victim,” replied Murphy. “There was a 15 year old who was convicted on the same evidence . . . He was convicted in a children’s court of false imprisonment. . . . Will the taoiseach support his appeal to overturn his conviction?
“Deputy Murphy owes those people who got caught up in this an apology as well,” said Varadkar.
With the government benches still yelling their outrage and Solidarity’s three TDs visibly furious, the taoiseach was not finished yet. He listened impassively to the next scheduled speaker, Joan Collins of Independents4Change. A new report published that morning, entitled Investing in the Right to a Home, had forecast that the housing crisis would escalate in the next five years, Collins said. Its authors, NUI Maynooth academics Mary Murphy and Rory Hearne, stated that “families can be severely damaged and traumatised from living in emergency accommodation, including family hubs”.
Varadkar rose once more, and unleashed another volley of fire against the left.
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“I have met Rory Hearne on occasion in the past,” he said.” I recall he was student union president in Trinity when I was a student there and I think he may even have been an election candidate for one of the left-wing groups more recently than that. I met him not too long ago at a running event in the Phoenix Park where he was less than pleasant, to put it that way. It certainly was not the kind of polite conversation I would expect from a university academic.”
Hearne, a political and economic geography lecturer in Maynooth who contested last year’s Seanad election as an Independent candidate, has not responded but some of his senior colleagues vented their fury on Twitter.
“Comments of taoiseach @campaignforleo yesterday in the Dáil re Dr Rory Hearne are deeply troubling,” tweeted Seán Ó Riain, a sociology professor. “ A potentially chilling effect on future career, research decisions and funding.”
“Agreed,” tweeted Linda Connolly, the director of Maynooth’s Social Science Institute. “The work involved research participants who have experienced homelessness and who deserve due respect in any policy discussions.”
Within 20 minutes, Varadkar’s exchanges with Murphy and Collins, respectively, culminated in six complaints to the Dail’s Committee on Procedure and a show of indignation by the normally sedate academia. Should the taoiseach be worried?
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“I don’t think he would be the least bit worried,” said Frank Flannery, a former Fine Gael adviser. “He’s making a dramatic start; a brilliant start in my opinion. He’s a very combative politician. He takes on anything he sees as excessive posturing and he does it in coherent, literate and full sentences. He’s a different style of politician. We haven’t had anyone like him in the Dail in my lifetime. He’ll get enormous support for taking on the extremities of the left.”
Pat Rabbitte, a former Labour Party leader and constituency rival of Murphy, thinks so too. “It’s a big winner for the taoiseach because, contrary to what [Solidarity] would have you believe, the audience is limited for their brand of left politics.”
Already braced by Varadkar’s promise during the Fine Gael leadership campaign that he would represent people “who get up early”, the left is showing no inclination to raise the white flag.
On July 6, Varadkar said on RTE’s Prime Time that Nóirín O’Sullivan, the garda commissioner, should examine evidence given by members of the force at the Jobstown trial. Following O’Sullivan’s admission on Thursday that the garda evidence is not part of a review she has ordered, McDonald challenged Varadkar to make a statement “outlining exactly how he intends to deal with the allegations”.
Might the fall-out from his spat with Murphy cause more trouble than it was worth?
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“I think it’s quite a high risk strategy,” said Theresa Reidy, a lecturer in Irish politics at UCC. “Whilst, in opposition, you can be a campaigning politician, when you are in government you have to deliver for the voters. The political circumstances make it difficult to get work through the Dail. Rhetoric alone is not enough. If citizens don’t see their lives improving they will be quick to find fault with him.”
Reidy said, however, that Ireland “is pretty centrist” and “there is a growing belief across Europe” that centrist politicians must challenge “populist parties”that offer simplistic solutions to complex problems”.
She cites the example of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, deconstructing Marine Le Pen’s assertions“in tiresome detail” in televised debates during this year’s election campaign.
“Varadkar has more rhetoric and at a higher level but that will be something to watch out for, especially on the issue of bin charges,” Reidy said. “The belief is you have to push back against the socialists. The perceived wisdom used to be ‘don’t bore the voters because they might go off and make a cup of tea’. Now it is that you must explain to people. You can’t just let sweeping statements go unchallenged. Macron is upheld as having done that very effectively. Varadkar, we’re told, is influenced by Macron. He also reads widely. He’s unusual in that he has read books of academic science.”
Collins says there is a marked difference between Vardkar’s style and that of his predecessor, Enda Kenny. “When I raised questions with Kenny about homelessness he said I wasn’t living in the real world but he didn’t name somebody like Rory Hearne who couldn’t defend himself in the Dail. Varadkar criticises others about Dail privilege but he uses it himself to name people who are not members.“
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The hostilities between Varadkar and the left are likely to grow as the October budget approaches and ideologicial choices come into clearer focus. The trade unions behind the Right2Water campaign are considering adopting the proposed new bin charges as their next cause.
On Thursday, Brendan Ogle, a founding member of Right2Water, recalled on Facebook his first enounter with Varadkar. Ogle was a union official at the ESB and Vardkar was a new minister.
“I found our now taoiseach pretty engaging,” said Ogle, “So much so that he began by surprising me by telling me about his visit to Cuba. He had visited my second favourite country previously and expressed himself as being most impressed with aspects of the Cuban revolution, including the world leading model of medical care and universal education, while - like me - he had concerns with some other aspects.”
Ccentrists criticise the left for treating street politics as equally important as parliamentary politics. The gamble Varadkar is taking is that austerity has abated sufficently to take the steam out of the street protest constituency.