There was no mystery in the Opposition’s barking response to Leo Varadkar’s shock resignation last week. He had opened up an appalling vista where youngish politicians might actually admit they no longer felt up to the job and then might even resign. Shocking.

The best they could do at short notice was demand repeatedly that he admit to the thing he had already admitted to hours earlier. Yep, that was unmistakably him, slumped in his seat, undeniably worn down, despondent, defeated, resigned by his own hand. He hadn’t changed his mind. Maybe they mistook him for a mansize piñata that if beaten hard and long enough, might suddenly break open and release a million new houses. It wasn’t smart, productive or even politically cunning.

The absence of conventional courtesies was not just a fearful surrender to what the speakers believed their base expected of them; it was an own goal. What they do unto others, they eventually do unto themselves and all who come after them. They diminish the profession of politics itself. Those in the chamber scrolling through social media would have been well aware of the tidal venom unleashed by the announcement, not to mention the wilful ignorance catching fire around the Constitutional rules of appointing of a successor or the notion that a candidate’s election on a later count meant they were less legitimate than the poll-topper. None saw fit to acknowledge or correct it.

Resignations come in many forms but are rarely about........

© The Irish Times