Leo Varadkar on Brexit, Boris Johnson & Coming Out

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.4 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, Adam sits down with former Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to discuss his time in office, how he became the leader of Ireland and his new book Speaking My Mind.

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Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. The presenter was Adam Fleming. It was made by Shiler Mahmoudi. The booking producer was Miranda Slade. The social producer was Jess Phillips. The technical producer was Ben Andrews. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:06.0	Hello, this episode of Newscast is going to be a conversation with one interesting person.
0:12.1	Now, when I was in Brussels covering Brexit, I hung on every word of Leo Varadkar because he was the Tao Tao
0:19.7	T-Shok, the Prime Minister of Ireland, and such a
0:23.3	massive player in the Brexit negotiations, whether it was the backstop. Do you remember that
0:29.0	was the original plan for EU law to still apply in Northern Ireland so that you avoided
0:33.6	checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to Ireland. Then there was the UK-wide backstop
0:38.7	under Theresa May. Then Boris Johnson took over and we had a front stop and all sorts of shenanigans.
0:44.6	And there was that amazing moment when Varadkar and Boris Johnson met at a hotel in the Whirl.
0:49.9	And it all looked really bleak. And then they emerged and they're like, oh, we've got a deal.
0:52.8	And that basically opened the door to Brexit actually happening. And then he, his party didn't do very
0:58.9	well in the elections. And then he went into coalition with his arch rivals and they did a deal
1:04.7	whereby they'd share the position of T-Shok. So he then came back for two years as T-Shok and then
1:10.2	stunned everyone by doing a
1:11.7	Jacinda Ardurn and saying, actually, I'm quitting because I'm not really enjoying this anymore.
1:16.8	So he's now written all of this down in his new book, Speaking My Mind, and we thought it would
1:21.2	be interesting to get him to speak his mind here on this episode of Newscast.
1:25.6	Newscast from the BBC. Fat boy slimmer me in the classroom doing our violin lessons. I was the tappletail in the class. Can I have an apology, please? I trust almost nobody. That daddy has to sometimes do strong language. Next time in Moscow. I feel delulu with no salulu. Take me down to Downey Street. Let's go have a tour.
1:44.7	Blimey.
1:45.7	I was just going to say, like, what's the word for a former T-Shok? Er-Hishach. Okay. I'm not going to try and pronounce that. Just think of ear. Okay. Also, can you give us the quintessential pronunciation of T-Shok? I mean, I said it on the news hundreds and hundreds of times,
2:01.3	and I was never quite convinced that was getting it right.
2:03.4	That's a tishach.
	...

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