“This has caused upset and misunderstanding and so I withdraw it.”
Former Unionist MP John Taylor, who now goes by the title, Lord Kilclooney, has said he is “no way racist” after referring to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar as “the Indian” in a conversation on social media on Thursday.
In a reply to a tweet posted by Sunday Business Post political columnist Hugh O’Connell on Thursday about a comment made by Simon Coveney to the Oireachtas Good Friday Agreement Committee, Lord Kilclooney said: “Simon Coveney is stirring things up. Very dangerous non statesman like role! Clearly hoping to undermine the Indian.”
https://twitter.com/oconnellhugh/status/933717048768847873
https://twitter.com/KilclooneyJohn/status/933758169117052929
Lord Kilclooney’s labelling of Varadkar as “the Indian” prompted a number of angry and critical replies on Twitter shortly afterwards.
After responding to many of them with claims that he was unaware that Leo Varadkar is “100 percent Irish”, that he wasn’t sure how to spell his name and that he was limited by the number of characters, Lord Kilclooney withdrew his use of the term on Thursday night.
https://twitter.com/KilclooneyJohn/status/933799381823905798
https://twitter.com/KilclooneyJohn/status/933818571527946240
“In Twitter one is restricted to a limited number of words and so for shorthand I used the term Indian for the new PM in Dublin,” he wrote.
“This has caused upset and misunderstanding and so I withdraw it. I am no way racist and accept that Varadkar is 100 percent Irish Citizen.”
After Lord Kilclooney had posted the tweets, he received responses pointing out that he had used the correct spelling for Varadkar in previous social media communications (see below) and that, by simply writing ‘Varadkar’ instead of ‘The Indian’, he would actually have used two fewer characters.
https://twitter.com/KilclooneyJohn/status/931811359859331072
Lord Kilclooney came to national attention earlier this week when he suggested that
Donegal would be better off if it were to join the United Kingdom.
