Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar announces he is resigning as leader

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of Ireland said on Wednesday he will step down as leader of the country as soon as a successor is chosen.

He also said he is immediately quitting his position as leader of the Fine Gael party, which is part of the coalition government currently in power.

He said his reasons were “both personal and political,” according to the New York Post.

The announcement comes just days after he suffered a political defeat at the polls, which he described as “two wallops” that the voters had given his government.

He was the country’s youngest-ever leader when first elected, and Ireland’s first biracial and first openly gay prime minister.

“I’m proud that we have made the country a more equal and more modern place,” he said in a resignation statement in Dublin.

Irish voters went to the polls on Friday, where they rejected proposals backed by the prime minister to replace constitutional references to the makeup of a family and a mother’s “duties in the home,” in a major defeat for the government.

Varadkar held the vote to coincide with International Women's Day, as a chance to delete some "very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women."

The results of the vote were announced on Saturday. One proposal would have expanded the definition of family from a relationship founded on marriage to one that includes other durable relationships. It was rejected by 67.7% to 32.3%, according to Reuters.

A second referendum proposed replacing language involving a woman's duties in the home with a clause recognizing the role of other family members providing care, and it was rejected by 73.9% to 26.1%.

Speaking to reporters in Dublin on Saturday, Varadkar said "It was our responsibility to convince a majority of people to vote yes, and we clearly failed to do so."