Message from the Editor: Making sense of Varadkar’s decision to step down

A four-day week between St Patrick’s Day and the Easter school holidays promised to be relatively quiet. It was anything but. Leo Varadkar’s announcement on Wednesday that he was stepping down as Taoiseach was that rare thing: a big political event that nobody – not his colleagues, not the reporters who follow him – saw coming. We have spent the days since that announcement trying to help our readers make sense of it.

Varadkar says he made his decision only last weekend, when he was in the United States for St Patrick’s Day celebrations. In an extended behind-the-scenes look at the build-up to the announcement and its aftermath, political correspondents Jennifer Bray, Harry McGee and Cormac McQuinn trace Varadkar’s first thoughts of departure to last Christmas. They identify some of the “personal and political” reasons the Taoiseach cited on Wednesday and give an hour-by-hour account of a week that has reshaped the political landscape. But if the decision to go came late, some insiders had noticed that Varadkar’s focus seemed to be drifting as far back as his return to the Taoiseach’s office in 2022, according to a column by Political Editor Pat Leahy.

Varadkar’s legacy will take time to settle. As with most political leaders, collective memory of his years in office will be shaped to a large degree by what follows. But this week we publish some early assessments of a premiership that was marked by two crises – Brexit and the Covid pandemic. In his essay, Fintan O’Toole examines the contradictions of a man who was “transformative in who he was but not in what he did.” Varadkar’s great talent, Fintan writes, was for “riding out contradictions, not for resolving them.” He managed to “walk the line between politician and anti-politician, conservative instincts and an increasingly progressive society.”

If, as Fintan suggests, Varadkar realises he cannot walk the tightrope much longer, and that big choices about Ireland’s direction can no longer be avoided, there are as yet few signs that Fine Gael is eager for such self-appraisal. Our main editorial notes that the party’s rapid rallying behind Simon Harris as Varadkar’s successor has occurred without any serious discussion about what Harris believes or how he might lead. Though he has seemed ubiquitous for more than a decade, the editorial points out, Harris is still a relatively unknown entity with a mixed record in government and little experience of some of the major issues a head of government must handle, including the economy and Northern Ireland. Harris’s energy will give a jolt to a party that shows signs of fatigue, it suggests. “But the much more basic question is what Fine Gael will stand for under his leadership.”

Michael McDowell: Simon Harris’s Duracell bunny, frantic honeymoon approach to being Taoiseach

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It’s a theme that runs through Cliff Taylor’s column, headlined ‘Simon Harris sizzles on social media but voters need substance’, as well as Jack Horgan-Jones’s illuminating account of internal opinion on the party’s future. “We have been forgetting about the listening part,” says Ciarán Cannon, one of around a dozen Fine Gael TDs who have said they will not stand for re-election.

While one story dominated the week, you’ll find hundreds of articles, podcasts and videos on other themes across our site this weekend.

Drawing on an interview with the late Annie McCarrick’s mother Nancy, Aine Ryan provides some surprising new insights into the Garda investigation into the disappearance of the 26-year-old American in 1993.

To mark the 80th birthday of the journalist Nell McCafferty, we asked a number of people to reflect on the achievements of this remarkable woman. In Sport, we have comprehensive coverage of Ireland’s draw with Belgium – a game that will have strengthened John O’Shea’s case for a longer spell in the manager’s seat.

Late on Friday night we tore up the front page of our print edition as we got news of a gun attack on a concert venue near Moscow. You can read the latest news on the fallout from an attack that left 133 people dead and for which Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

Also in our World section, London Correspondent Mark Paul meets Andy Burnham, the former British Labour minister, who is running for a third term as mayor of Manchester; Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan asks whatever happened to US vice-president Kamala Harris; and China Correspondent Denis Staunton gives us a glimpse into the country’s life and economy through the story of a Beijing food delivery driver.

Finally, take some time over Lauren Murphy’s big read on Beyoncé, note these 50 travel hacks from Conor Pope and browse our extensive offering of the latest book, music and films reviews.

Ruadhán Mac Cormaic

Editor