Famously, the Taoiseach has a portrait of his predecessor, Sean Lemass, hanging in his office. On the surface, this seems a strange choice. The contrast in party, age and era could hardly be greater. When he finally became Taoiseach in 1959, Lemass was almost sixty, a founding member of Fianna Fail and had been a senior figure in every De Valera cabinet since 1932. By contrast, Varadkar was not yet forty, a precocious product of Young Fine Gael and had been a cabinet minister under Enda Kenny for just six years when he succeeded him in 2017. But crucially, Lemass…

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