In her radio column for Drivetime this week, Olivia O’Leary gave her own view of the generational shift underway at the top of Irish politics and what it means beyond the simple reality of the number of years a politician has clocked up on this earth. If he becomes Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, at 38, will be the youngest leader in the EU.
But beyond that simple age difference, there is a more profound generational shift, representing a shift in attitude among younger Irish people. Over the course of the last week, Olivia has spoken to a lot of those younger people, and has discovered why Leo Varadkar’s appeal might lie somewhere else, besides his youth.
“It’s not his Indian name, or even his sexuality, that will make him seem different to some voters. But the fact that he really does represent a generational change in politics.”
And what does that generational change actually mean? Well, according to Olivia, perhaps it is his “emphasis on rugged individualism. The American dream, that those who take their opportunities, and work hard enough, can achieve whatever they want.”
Olivia’s own generation, she says, grew up in the 1960s, and “believed in the collective. We believed in unions, in feminist sisterhood, in matching together against wars and apartheid. We were idealistic about working for the state.”
Most young people, these days, neither join unions nor care for them, unless they are in the public sector, a career choice many young people regard as belonging to those who lack ambition.
Leo Varadkar, on the other hand, “belongs to a generation for whom loyalty to a brand, or loyalty to party, has little meaning. Loyalty is a collective notion, after all. And this generation are individual consumers.”
How this will play out in his political career to come remains to be seen. And you can hear Olivia’s full perspective on the significance of this generational shift, represented in part by our putative Taoiseach, by clicking here.