Don’t blame Ireland for beating Britain in the Brexit negotiations

Plámás is an Irish word that lacks a precise English equivalent. It means a special kind of empty flattery, disingenuous praise, or pleasing, but soft-soaping, bullshit, offered the better to smooth over a particular difficulty or advance towards a particular objective.

It is the currency, the bread-and-butter, of Irish politics where everyone is a ‘grand man’ or a ‘gas fella’ and all things may be possible, at all times, for all people. You may divide Irish politicians between the natural plámásers (Charlie Haughey, for
instance) and those for whom it is a learned but never fluent skill (Garret Fitzgerald). Most of the time, the naturals win.

Leo Varadkar is not a natural. There are some wise folk in Ireland who think Anglo-Irish relations might be a little less fraught right now if he were. The Taoiseach says what he thinks and may, on occasion, say it a little too obviously. He is not a Bertie Ahern or even an Enda Kenny, each of whom might have made a greater show of flattering the British during these wretched, interminable, Brexit negotiations.