To the raucous acclaim of hundreds of party members and activists, Simon Harris became the new leader of Fine Gael – and presumptive next Taoiseach – on Sunday afternoon in Athlone and promised to expend “blood, sweat and tears, day in and day out” in his efforts to rejuvenate the party and lead the country.
Though you wouldn’t guess it from the large and enthusiastic gathering in the ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel, Fine Gael is tired from 13 years in Government, battered by events, shocked at the decision of Leo Varadkar to quit, and badly in need of a shot in the arm.
Harris looks like making a good fist of providing that. There was much talk of Fine Gael values and a pledge to listen to the party grassroots, promises of energy and enthusiasm.
Fine Gael shop talk suggests that Harris is more likely to follow Enda Kenny’s example in tending the party organisation than Varadkar’s more standoffish approach. He certainly knows the party’s erogenous zones and he paid them due attention – the loudest roar (of many) and longest standing ovation were when he decried the use of the tricolour atop the coffin of “garda killer” Pearse McAuley this week.
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“Take it back!” Harris cried. “Take our flag back!” The delegates roared their approval.
Harris knows he needs to give his party a lift. He also knows that his most important audience is not hotel ballrooms stuffed full of Fine Gael trenchermen and women. It’s the broader public, especially those who voted for Fine Gael in the past but have since deserted the party, that comprise the most important targets for Harris’s messages.
In the coming weeks, he will get an opportunity to speak to these people. They will perk up and pay some attention when a new Taoiseach is elected, and will listen to what he says. But that window of opportunity will not stay open forever; their attention will move on. Harris will not get a second chance to make a first impression – these next few weeks will be hugely important for his leadership and his premiership.
His early messages, verbal and symbolic, are more important than the perennial political parlour game of the impending reshuffle. Of course, Harris has a job of party management to do.
He needs to show some new faces, and his job became more difficult with Simon Coveney’s assurance that he intends to stand in the next general election – making him hard to drop – while Paschal Donohoe and Heather Humphreys are generally reckoned to be unsackable. Harris will discover the enduring problem of taoisigh – not enough jobs to keep everyone happy.
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The politics of reshuffles, though, are often overrated: the public tends to be as utterly disinterested in which politician gets which job as politicians are utterly consumed by it.
As well as choosing his own colleagues (and his senior staff), Harris will have to establish a relationship with the leaders of the other Coalition parties. The early meetings will be made a good deal easier by Harris’s announcement that he will wait until next year before calling a general election. It was a point of tension between them under Harris’s predecessor.
More broadly, he will have to learn to trust them, and they him, if the Government is to successfully navigate the transition from Coalition allies to electoral rivals.
And that is the reality that will loom over the premiership of Ireland’s youngest leader from the day he takes office until the coming general election. On its results Harris will ultimately be judged.
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