Leo Varadkar was ‘visibly irritated’ by rambling Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of a Brexit plan, says new book

Left Out, by journalists Patrick Maguire of The Times and Gabriel Pogrund of The Sunday Times, has been praised by both Labour supporters of Corbyn and his internal opponents as a fair account of how his extraordinary rise to the Labour leadership was followed by a chaotic final period of feuding, culminating in a devastating general election defeat.

Referring to a Dublin meeting between Mr Corbyn, his chief spin doctor Seamus Milne, his shadow secretary of state Tony Lloyd and the taoiseach on May 30 last year, Varadkar is said to have “only really wanted answers to three questions. How would Corbyn deal with a Johnson premiership? Would Labour support a second referendum? What, if anything, would Johnson support?”

Recounting what one member of the Labour delegation told the authors, the book described the discussion as “not only the most embarrassing meeting of their life, but a decisive moment on Varadkar’s own journey towards compromise with Johnson on the Irish border”.

It quotes that individual as saying: “I don’t think they saw any great trust or belief that Labour wanted anything or could push anything through ... in Ireland we felt a deep frustration from them in particular that we were just wasting people’s time by that point.”

When Mr Varadkar is said to have queried how Ireland and the other EU nations might be able to help a Labour government get a deal over the line, and questioned what he would need to offer, Mr Corbyn is said to have been unable to give a straight answer on how seriously he was considering a second referendum and similarly non-committal on whether a future Labour administration might accept a Norway-style settlement involving membership of the EU’s single market.

The book says that “Corbyn instead filled the vacuum by stressing his desire to protect the rights of the Irish community in Archway, at the northernmost edge of his constituency. One observer described Varadkar as visibly irritated by the Labour delegation’s lack of the hard answers he sought”.

At the time of going to press, Mr Varadkar’s office had not responded to a request for comment.

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