Oh dear. It was all meant to be going so well for British-Irish relations. Earlier this month both the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Republic’s president, Michael D. Higgins, flew out to London for King Charles’s coronation — the first Irish nationalist leaders to attend a British coronation in over a century. Even Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, managed to swallow her pride and make the visit, saying “I am an Irish republican. I also recognize there are many people on our island for whom the coronation is a hugely important occasion.”
It appears that some did not treat the ceremony with quite the same respect though. For also attending the event was Leo Varadkar’s boyfriend Matt Barrett, who went on to post several ribald messages to a private Instagram group during the coronation, which — rather embarrassingly for Varadkar — have now leaked to the Irish Times.
While waiting in Westminster Abbey for the King to arrive at the ceremony, Barrett appeared to ignore a message in the order of service asking guests to turn off their cell phones, and instead used the opportunity to crack a few jokes. After spotting one bit in the order of service, the consultant cardiologist screenshotted this passage:
“The queen’s sceptre and rod are brought from the altar by the Right Rev and Right Hon the Lord Chartres GCVO and the Right Rev Rose Hudson Wilkin CD MBE, Bishop of Dover. The queen touches them in turn.“
Before underlining the last line, and joking to his Instagram group, “Sounds like the script to a good night out, tbh.”
He also appeared to have been amused by the position of the Clerk of the Closet, joking that he “had this job until my early twenties.”
Barrett then posted a grainy picture of Charles wearing the St. Edward’s Crown with the message, “Was genuinely half expecting it to shout ‘GRYFFINDOR.’” (Cockburn can’t say he is too surprised — Harry Potter jokes are the calling card of a millennial who hasn’t read a book since the age of twelve.)
Barrett is well within his rights to mock the coronation, of course. But it does raise one pertinent question: if he thought it was so stupid, why attend the ceremony at all? There were plenty of other people desperate for a seat who would have been able to enjoy the occasion without acting like a petulant teenager.
Still, there is at least one upshot for Varadkar. With all the attention now on his boyfriend’s risqué humor, perhaps everyone will now forget that elsewhere at the ceremony he appeared to be caught on camera picking his nose.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
