The other week an Irish Times columnist pondered whether Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach, or Irish prime minister, actually exists. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he observed, “if after a day’s taoiseaching, they changed the batteries in the back of his head and put him in a cupboard . . . It’s like he was produced in a factory, after several intensive sessions with a focus group aimed at coming up with a politician reflective of a young, multicultural, inclusive Ireland.”

Well, quite so. And to cut to the chase, after reading this biography, I can tell you now the reader will still be in the dark as to what the point of Leo Varadkar is, what he stands for. It should be easy, you’d think, to