The departure of Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach yesterday should really be marked by Irish nationalists with elaborate memorials and tributes in Dublin, on a par with those for the founders of the Irish state.
This smooth-talking politician achieved more in one dinner than so-called freedom fighters did over 20 years
Despite the ignominious manner of his departure, having been conclusively told where to go by a chunk of the Irish population in a recent referendum designed to change fundamental elements of the constitution, Varadkar achieved something which most Irish leaders desire deep down: he managed to stiff the Brits.
His star turn at a dinner in Brussels in 2018, when he told his fellow EU leaders of tales of bombed customs posts during the Troubles, is viewed by many as the moment European leaders internalised Irish concerns about the return of the so-called ‘hard border’ during the tortuous series of Brexit negotiations.
Aided and abetted eventually by a British prime minister in Boris Johnson who jettisoned the cause of unionism in the name of political expediency, Varadkar accelerated the process of the UK government effectively ceding profound elements of the sovereignty of Northern Ireland to the Republic almost effortlessly.
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