Leo Varadkar: Britain’s Brexit nemesis is gone, but the problems he ushered in are not

In 2018, deep in the Brexit negotiations between Britain and the EU, Leo Varadkar played a masterstroke.

Over a summit dinner with his fellow EU leaders, the Taoiseach brandished a copy of the Irish Times featuring the story of an IRA attack on a border post that killed nine people in 1972.

He used it to drive home his conviction that the return of a hard border would mean a return to violence.

“I just wanted to make sure that there was no sense in the room that in any way anybody in Ireland or in the Irish government was exaggerating the real risk of a return to violence,” Mr Varadkar said.

It worked. The EU never wavered and it ultimately led to the creation of the Irish Sea border between Britain and Northern Ireland, which remains subject to EU law.

Mr Varadkar was largely praised for his handling of Brexit at home, where he will also be remembered as a key figure in the liberalisation of the once staunchly Catholic country.

The first openly gay Irish leader, and the first of half-Indian heritage, saw through a referendum overturning Ireland’s abortion ban, and helped steer the country out of the pandemic and to a healthy budget surplus.

His recent defeat in a referendum on changing “sexist” language in the Constitution won’t change that even if it was falsely hailed as a defeat of the “woke” politics he came to represent.

However, he leaves Ireland in the grips of a housing crisis and divisive debate over immigration, and his party Fine Gael facing a crushing defeat in a general election that appears certain to produce a Sinn Fein victory.

As Mr Varadkar acknowledged himself; he has gone from electoral asset to liability.

Britain compared to ‘a cheating wife’

Brexit posed a difficult challenge for Dublin in 2017, when, aged 38, Mr Varadkar became Ireland’s youngest Taoiseach.

The UK Government hoped Dublin would be a voice for pragmatism and compromise in the negotiations in the corridors of power of Brussels.

Instead, Mr Varadkar stuck rigidly to the EU’s negotiating red lines, even going so far as to compare Britain to a cheating wife wanting an open marriage.

Brexit ultimately meant the creation of the first land border between the UK and an EU member state on the island of Ireland.

With Theresa May intent on leaving the Single Market, this meant border checks on UK goods to ensure they met EU standards.

The Irish feared two things. One was the return of Troubles-style violence if infrastructure returned to the “invisible” border which had gradually disappeared after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

The other was being turfed out of the lucrative Single Market by their EU allies if Britain refused to set up border controls after a no-deal Brexit.

Mr Varadkar viewed both scenarios with horror. He was determined that Ireland would not be the “collateral damage” of Brexit, and set Ireland’s diplomats into overdrive.

In Brussels, they made clear that Ireland would not, as some Europeans feared, be the soft underbelly for Britain to divide and conquer the EU.

Dublin refused to back UK on technology

Dublin would not be joining UK calls for technology to be used to remove the need for physical border checks on the Irish border, which the Government had pinned its hopes on.

It also stood against Britain’s attempt to cherry pick the benefits of the Single Market without the obligations of membership.

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem like they have thought all this through,” Mr Varadkar said of the British, who were told there would be no EU trade talks until the Irish border issue was solved.

Later, he warned London that a no-deal Brexit would mean UK flights being unable to fly to EU countries.

He was dubbed an “EU toady” and “airhead” in The Sun for his trouble, as relations with the UK plunged into the deep freeze.

Brexiteers and unionists in Northern Ireland still blame Mr Varadkar for his part in creating the Irish Sea border by “weaponising” the land border and the threat to peace during the years of the Brexit talks.

The solution to the Irish border Mrs May and Brussels agreed on was the unloved “backstop”. Mrs May quit after failing three times to get her Brexit deal through parliament.

Boris Johnson took Britain back to the negotiating table. The result was deadlock until Mr Varadkar met Mr Johnson in Cheshire for talks in 2019 that paved the way for the Northern Ireland Protocol and Irish Sea border.

With Brexit safely delivered in 2021, Mr Johnson threatened to tear up the Protocol, which Dublin warned would break international law and jeopardise the peace process.

White House weighed in on deal

Mr Varadkar was part of the coalition government which called on Joe Biden, the most Irish US president in history, for help. The White House weighed in, warning London could forget any trade deal with the US if it tore up the treaty.

Last year, Mr Varadkar’s partner Matthew Barrett caused a diplomatic kerfuffle at the coronation by comparing the King’s crown to the sorting hat in Harry Potter.

“Was genuinely half expecting it to shout ‘GRYFFINDOR’”, he said to his 350 followers on Instagram alongside a grainy picture of the King from inside Westminster Abbey.

More recently, Mr Varadkar launched a rare European Court of Human Rights case against Britain over its plans for an amnesty for British Troubles veterans.

Mr Varadkar could now move on to a top job in the EU, but his bowing out of Irish politics will not herald a rapid improvement in relations between Dublin and London.

Poll-topping Sinn Fein has called for immediate elections before the deadline of March 2025, with its eyes on the prize of leading governments in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.

It will use that momentum to push for referendums on Irish reunification on both sides of the border.

That could one day mean the break-up of the United Kingdom, which would be a legacy even more surprising than Mr Varadkar’s shock resignation.