Mick Clifford making a great point on the radio today regarding Leo Varadkar’s political priorities, or lack thereof

5 comments

1. Without getting to the merits and context of his comments, he’s a top quality journalist.

2. Are they not overinterpreting these things?

   The greens are making the environmental policy, because that’s their speciality. But the Greens have few rural TDs. It’s FG and FF’s rural TDs that are selling this to their constituents. For example, the 25% in emissions from agriculture – that was a big sell

3. Varadkar putting out a list of demands for coalition, and talking about what other parties stand for is a bit fucking rich, the man has a face for every agenda going, as slippery as an eel, a political parasite. What is his priorities, what does he stand for? It changes with the breeze.

   He is a gay man who came out in opposition to gay marriage when it was politically advantageous to do so, and only changed his opinion when public support changed. He’d probably support Brexit, Irexit, anti immigration, vaccine denial and Russias invasion of Ukraine if public opinion were different.

   So I guess wrt climate change, if we want Leo to take it seriously, we’re going to have to wait until the polls/focus groups start changing too, because that’s what he does

4. He has a good point, but it’s not just Varadkar who thinks this way. Most people do and therefore more politicians do.

   Your average person thinks we should stop climate change but at the same time, will oppose any kind of climate action policy that will affect them. That’s the main reason why Green parties across the world are popular in opposition and hated with vitriol in government. The poltical manifestation of this is poltical parties with stated climate policies which they have no intention of passing.

   We already know that FFG love to make big commitments and do nothing to actually make them a reality. We know that Sinn Féin is in the same camp because they’re signing up to the big commitments, but so far have opposed any of the unpopular (but necessary) policies and their own policies are extremely vague.

   PBP-S also make big commitments but they don’t really count because they’re a protest party with no interest in entering a coalition (they’ve said as much themselves).

   Labour and Social Democrats do have a good track record of supporting difficult climate policies like carbon taxes, but since they’re small and will have to make lots of compromises to entrer government, climate policies will be areas where they’ll concede on.

   The Green party is basically the only party that won’t compromise on climate action. And while Irish are oppossed to climate action that affects them, they’ll continue to be the only party to do so and the other parties will continue to look for concessions from the Greens in order to enable them to do so.

   Climate action will be painful, costly and will affect all of us. It’s a real pity that humanity will need to live through harsh, partly unreversable climate change before it does anything when knew how bad it was going to get decades in advance.

5. Ah yes, the classic “my political demands are not political” shtick