Leo Varadkar Resigns as Irish PM

Foundering Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has announced his resignation in the wake of his party’s recent crushing defeats at the ballot box.

Leo Varadkar’s decision to step down as prime minister of Ireland was so surprising that, according to reports, not even colleagues from his centre-right party, Fine Gael, saw it coming.

Varadkar’s approval rating, which had reached 65 percent in 2020, has fallen to 41 percent since voters rejected the anti-family amendments he supported.

Related: Irish Anti-Family Referendum Defeated

With his party floundering in the polls, the 45-year-old said that another leader – and therefore another prime minister – would be “better placed” to tackle the next Irish general election, which must be held no later than March 2025.

As the dramatic manner of his resignation suggests, Varadkar has not shied away from making political waves during his time as a front-line politician.

Indeed, when the former medical doctor became taoiseach in 2017 at the age of just 38, he immediately made history as the youngest, the first mixed-race and the first openly gay politician to occupy the premiership of Ireland, a European Union member state steeped in Catholic heritage.

Varadkar’s attempt to modernise references to family and women in the country’s 87-year-old constitution in a dual referendum earlier this month resulted in a humiliating and heavy defeat for the taoiseach and his political allies.

The first question in the referendum asked Irish voters for permission to widen the definition of family by amending wording so it read that families can be established “on marriage or on other durable relationships”.

Related: Extreme Rosary

The second question asked citizens whether the clause – “mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” – should be deleted and another – “The state recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision” – added.

Varadkar had described the polls, which deliberately fell on International Women’s Day on March 8, as a chance to do away with “very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women”.

In the end, however, the nation disagreed with him and, while Ireland’s main political parties all campaigned for a “Yes, Yes” vote, Varadkar was particularly criticised for leading a “gimmicky” and “confusing” campaign.

“There are a lot of people who got this wrong and I am certainly one of them,” he said after the referendum results were announced.

Related: A Rash of Sacrilege

Ireland’s minister for higher education and former health minister, Simon Harris, is being widely touted as the favourite to succeed Varadkar as leader of Fine Gael, and become Irish prime minister.

At just 37, a victory for Harris would see him trump Varadkar as the youngest-ever Irish taoiseach if Fine Gael declare him as its new party leader on April 6, and he is voted in by the Irish Parliament after the Easter break.

Get get FREE books and first looks at my exciting new projects monthly! Join my elite neopatrons to read my new dark fantasy novel The Burned Book as I write it!

Join on Patreon or SubscribeStar now.