Another day, another thing you thought you would never see. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar visited Windsor Park, home of Linfield Football Club. And by all accounts, he was given a warm welcome.
Fantastic welcome from @LinfieldFC at Windsor Park today. Great to meet with Academy members and club officials. pic.twitter.com/HjHB8Fa8og
— Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) August 9, 2023
These little moments of grace are essential to our road to normality. It does not take much effort to be civil to people, and the rewards pay off.
I don’t know about you, but I find strong emotions like hate and anger exhausting. At times I wonder where sections of our community get the energy to keep up their animosity to the other side. I know John Lydon once said ‘Anger is an energy’ but it also eats you up.
Amid the bonhomie, the BBC reports him venturing into the debate over the restoration of the Assembly:
With the Linfield board looking on, he said there was a window of opportunity to restore the Stormont Executive – not to be confused with the transfer window.
If that opportunity is missed, said Mr Varadkar, “then I do think at that point we have to start having conversations about alternatives, about Plan B”.
I asked if he was talking about joint authority over Northern Ireland shared between the British and Irish governments and he pointed out there was no provision for that in the Good Friday Agreement – but nor was there any provision for direct rule from Westminster, he said, adding: “I don’t mean anything specifically.”
So what is the mysteries Plan B? Or is it just a politician MacGuffin?
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
