- Joined
- Feb 2, 2010
- Messages
- 27,101
- Reaction score
- 12,359
- Location
- Granada, España
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian - Left
It looks as if Leo Varadkar has been selected to replace Enda Kenny as the leader of the Irish Fine Gael party, and that means he'll also take over as Taoiseach, or Prime Minister.
Varadkar is the son of a mixed Indian/Irish family and during the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015, he talked for the first time about being gay.
Congratulations to him, to Fine Gael and to the Irish people for moving their society in the right direction and for making a positive decision to select the best person for the job, and not just the best white heterosexual for the job. How nice to have a piece of good news to comment on for a change.
Leo Varadkar wins Fine Gael leadership battle, and is set to be next Taoiseach - Independent.ie
It's going to make cross border relations interesting
New government attire.
It's ironic really - he's actually going to be our most right-wing Taoiseach for decades (which, given the current state of the Irish left, is for the best).
Basically, for various historical and practical reasons, Irish politics has always been very populist and pragmatic, with ideology taking a back seat. This was just amplified with partition, which really removed a lot of the ideological diversity that we had. Then, in the aftermath of the Civil War they implemented Single Tranferable Vote to try and keep everyone enfranchised. Whilst STV is very good for making the parliament representative, it also means that politicians have to get as many votes as humanely possible. For the most part of the last century, that meant being devoutly Catholic and thus, conservative socially. However, it also meant many governments were quite left wing economically. It is an onrunning tradition of Irish politics that every government runs the budget in such a way that in the last budget before an election, they go on a spending spree, effectively buying votes. Fianna Fáil were masters of this and they dominated politics like the Republicans did during the Reagan era or the ANC currently does in South Africa.Ah, that's interesting. In what way is he right-wing? I know Fine Gael have always been soft-centre-right and a little less nationalistic than FF or SF, but frankly, I'd never even heard of him before today.
Can you give us a bit of background to this new player on the global stage?
It looks as if Leo Varadkar has been selected to replace Enda Kenny as the leader of the Irish Fine Gael party, and that means he'll also take over as Taoiseach, or Prime Minister.
Varadkar is the son of a mixed Indian/Irish family and during the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015, he talked for the first time about being gay.
Congratulations to him, to Fine Gael and to the Irish people for moving their society in the right direction and for making a positive decision to select the best person for the job, and not just the best white heterosexual for the job. How nice to have a piece of good news to comment on for a change.
Leo Varadkar wins Fine Gael leadership battle, and is set to be next Taoiseach - Independent.ie
It looks as if Leo Varadkar has been selected to replace Enda Kenny as the leader of the Irish Fine Gael party, and that means he'll also take over as Taoiseach, or Prime Minister.
Varadkar is the son of a mixed Indian/Irish family and during the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015, he talked for the first time about being gay.
Congratulations to him, to Fine Gael and to the Irish people for moving their society in the right direction and for making a positive decision to select the best person for the job, and not just the best white heterosexual for the job. How nice to have a piece of good news to comment on for a change.
Leo Varadkar wins Fine Gael leadership battle, and is set to be next Taoiseach - Independent.ie
Did you enjoy surfing for the pic to post there?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?