With the Government still reeling from the fuel protests, senior Coalition members probably let out a sigh when they saw the latest comments from former taoiseach Leo Varadkar.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the Path to Power Podcast with Matt Cooper, on which he has become a regular contributor, Varadkar drove a wedge between urban and rural Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s in the interests of farmers and the agriculture industry is by and large not in the interests of Ireland as a nation,” he said.<\/p>\n
Varadkar went on to say \u201cpeople in urban Ireland\u201d should tell \u201cpeople in rural Ireland\u201d that the former are the ones \u201cpaying all the bills\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also said rural Ireland is \u201cin receipt of a lot of subsidies and a lot of tax benefits that other people don\u2019t get\u201d.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, the comments sparked huge controversy, and Varadkar subsequently rowed back and said he had overstated things.<\/p>\n
Fine Gael leader Simon Harris was forced to distance the party from his predecessor’s comments. According to sources, the pair’s relationship was always strained.<\/p>\n
Varadkar had a habit of putting his foot in his mouth as taoiseach, and with politics now behind him, he has the freedom to say what he wants.<\/p>\n
Since stepping down as taoiseach, Varadkar has done some work at Harvard University in the US, wrote a memoir, Speaking My Mind, and appeared on various podcasts and news shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Path to Power has been a regular appearance for him, and that’s where he made the recent comments.<\/p>\n
With the trend of politicians leaving for other pursuits younger in life, this will likely become a more regular occurrence.<\/p>\n
At 47, Varadkar will be looking for work for many years, and his controversial comments may continue to upset former colleagues.<\/p>\n
These will be a headache for the Government, but Varadkar won’t care.<\/p>\n
After all, it’s hardly anything on a par with Boris Johnson’s musing in his Daily Mail column, where he openly attacks former colleagues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the Government still reeling from the fuel protests, senior Coalition members probably let out a sigh when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-424522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}