Leo Varadkar stood up for the whole island of Ireland against Brexit madness

For a small country, Ireland really does produce a large number of very impressive people. With the departure of Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach, one of them is leaving the political scene, although given his youth and reputation it seems likely that his career is far from over.

Among those who will be relieved to see him go are some of the Tory ministers and prime ministers he ran rings round during the Brexit wars. All that money spent on private education and Oxbridge seemed to mean nothing when it came to dealing with the Irish PM.

Varadkar became Taoiseach a year after the referendum. He had already formed a strong view about what it meant for the Irish border with Northern Ireland, the economic consequences and the threat to peace.

A hard border in Ireland was never going to happen on his watch. But let’s face it, his task was made considerably easier by the Brexiteers with their talk about the border being an Irish or EU problem, their sneering “nothing to do with us, mate” attitude and even their pathetic “offer” for the Irish Republic to rejoin the UK.

Strangely though those lunatic ideas didn’t enable Tory PMs to do likewise and tell the Brexit ultras to pipe down. Instead, the government tied itself in knots, while Ireland and the EU stuck to their principles and faced UK negotiators down.

The UK was in the end forced to sign a deal guaranteeing no border on the island of Ireland, which meant one in the Irish Sea – the very thing Boris Johnson had promised would not happen. This further reinforced his reputation as a man who could not be trusted and ultimately contributed to his downfall, when even some disappointed Brexiteers abandoned him.

While Johnson did remain in power, his government stamped its feet, threatening to break international law and tar up the treaty with the EU which it had just negotiated. Varadkar stood firm.

In the end Rishi Sunak was forced to sign the Windsor Framework, promising to do what his predecessors had promised to do in the first place. Varadkar’s victory was total.

The duped and discredited DUP has been in a hissy fit ever since. Brexiteers cry betrayal and promise revenge. But Dublin got exactly what it wanted out of the deal and Northern Ireland got “the best of both worlds” as Rishi Sunak proclaimed. Membership of both the UK’s economy and the single market.

If anyone in this current government had any grace or manners they would thank the outgoing Taoiseach, for saving the peace in Northern Ireland, boosting its economy, keeping it in the single market for goods and dealing with a bunch of rabid fools better than it could.

But somehow, I can’t see them having the courage to do even that.