Varadkar set to ship more political damage over leak of GP draft contract

It’s been the first week in quite a while that Covid-19 has been knocked from the top slot in politics by other events and controversies.

For it to happen, it's taken no less than polling day in a US presidential election (which we will come back to later) and Leo Varadkar getting snared in a trap of his own making – our print lead today.

What will play out over the next few days in the Dáil is a procession or ritual that has become familiar to anyone who knows how our form of parliamentary politics works.

A political storm erupts involving an office holder. Government colleagues rush in to their defence.

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Opposition TDs rifle the thesaurus entries for ‘scandal’ and ‘outrage’. The Minister makes a statement in the Dáil. If it is immediately serious – corruption, a blatant lie, bullying or harassment, a serious breach of a law or code – the Minister is a goner.

If it is less so, the Minister will survive with his or her reputation diminished.

Unless of course, there is more, and the Minister can’t just draw a line under it. If the Minister accumulates headlines over a week, that also spells curtains.

So what happens now?

At this vantage point, ahead of today’s Dáil debate, it looks like there is zero possibility Varadkar will resign.

He’s going to ship political damage though, that’s for sure. For one, his apology needs to be a bit more contrite than the mealy mouthed explanation at the weekend that his manner of dealing with it “could have been better”.

There was an embarrassment of Fine Gael Ministers (all five senior Ministers plus a couple of junior ministers) falling over themselves yesterday to defend the Tánaiste’s honour.

They reminded us he’s a boy scout at heart, there is not a calculating bone in his body, he would never do anything for partisan gain and the only reason he leaked the document was because he cares so deeply about us all. I am paraphrasing a little, but you get the drift.

Fianna Fáil’s response has been indolent and forgettable.

The Greens – and Catherine Martin is increasingly becoming its conscience in Government – made its support conditional on what Varadkar says in the Dáil.

The Opposition is beginning to bay though.

There are two problems for Varadkar.

The first is his act of passing on the draft of the contract to Maitiú Ó Tuathail. To be fair, the substantive details of what had been agreed were in the public domain at that stage. But he was still dealing with a document that was unorthodox and possibly incorrect.

And in all that it’s really really hard to divine his stated reason that he wanted to convince the 2,000 GPs attached to the National Association of General Practitioners to accept the contract.

Now maybe there is correspondence between him and Maitiú Ó Tuathail that backs up the argument that by sharing the contract, the floodgates of support from these GPs would open.

At this moment the counter-argument seems more credible – that he was doing a favour for a buddy who asked for a copy of the contract.

All we have to go on at this moment is the series of personal messages from Ó Tuathail to the whistleblower that are boastful and bombastic. Of course, these were private communications never intended to be seen by third parties.

But they have been seen and they reflect badly on Ó Tuathail. The subjective line that Varadkar does “not give a f***” about refugees will need a response, even though he can’t be responsible for what a third party claims or does.

And to that extent there are vague parallels with the US elections – it’s a slimmed-down version of a Hunter-Biden moment.

Which is a neat segue to our next item.

Biden time or Democrats biding (more) time?

Today is polling day in the States, and we might have some indication tonight of which way the wind is blowing. Will it be four more years for Donald J Trump? Or will the polls prove correct and put Joe Biden into the White House.

The polls all put Biden ahead, but they also put Hillary Clinton ahead in 2016. They were correct in so far as she won the popular vote, and Biden might just do the same this time round.

Our US correspondent Suzanne Lynch has set the scene.

As we all know, the archaic electoral college system in the States can lead to anomalous outcomes. Again it will come down to a handful of States including Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina. Polling in those States suggests a tighter outcome than in the national poll.

So what does it mean? That it could be very close indeed, bringing us into hanging-chad territory.

Except we won’t really know the outcome on the night of the election. That’s because an astounding 100 million Americans have voted by post, so if it’s close it’s going to take days if not weeks.

Instead of a hanging chad this time, we may have a naked ballot. In Pennsylvania, votes need to be put into a secrecy envelope that is then put inside another envelope. If the inside envelope is missing the vote is invalid, and therefore we have a naked ballot.

The polls got it badly wrong in 2016. There are lots of explainer pieces (like this one in the New York Times) explaining why Biden's lead looks unassailable and how pollsters have learned from the mistakes of four years ago.

We will find out if they are right or wrong over the coming days.

Best Reads

Pat Leahy's analysis on Leo Varadkar's predicament.

Fintan O'Toole's column on how US voters can get Trump out of office – and our heads.

The National Association of General Practitioners had threatened Fine Gael it would campaign against it in elections if it continued to be excluded from talks.

Jennifer Bray reports that SIPO has been asked to examine the leaking of the GP draft document by Leo Varadkar.

Mary Carolan reports a meeting will be held by judges about Séamus Woulfe, the new Supreme Court judge who has yet to take up his position because of the Golfgate controversy.

Playbook

Leaders’ Questions in the Dail will be at 2pm, but most attention will be focused on Leo Varadkar’s statement, and his response to questions about the document he handed on to a doctor friend.

Roderic O’Gorman will be engaging with the joint committee on children at 4pm, hoping to have a smoother experience than his difficult week a fortnight ago when he had to defend documents being sealed for decades.