HOW CAN SIMON HARRIS CONVINCE VOTERS TO GIVE FG ANOTHER RATTLE AT GOVERNMENT?
ON March 9, 2011, Simon Harris, a newly elected TD, nominated Enda Kenny for Taoiseach. It was Fine Gael’s first time in office since 1997. And now, Harris stands to be elected Taoiseach on Tuesday in the Dáil, after garnering massive support within the party and outside.
Fine Gael has served continuously in the Government since then to the present day.
Harris has been there for all of it, but Fine Gael is not used to serving in the Government for so long. Historically, it acted as an interloper to steady the ship when Fianna Fáil had run out of steam.
Harris, who will address his party’s Ard Fheis this evening, is now the man who is tasked with asking the public to allow Fine Gael to serve in the Government for an unprecedented fourth term in a row.
But what does Fine Gael now stand for?
And more crucially, what does Simon Harris stand for? What is his ideology?
I asked Harris exactly this question at his first doorstep as Taoiseach-in-waiting. His answer was revealing.
Harris said that he didn’t believe in ‘ideological labels’ and that they were ‘often misrepresented’ in Ireland, but then almost immediately added that he was committed to the ‘values’ of Fine Gael as a ‘Christian Democratic’ party.
That is, frankly, a cake-and-eat-it answer.
It signals to party members that Harris ‘gets them’, while the dismissal of ideological labels is a nod to the broader public who may consider voting Fine Gael but are put off by the sense that it is Ireland’s Tory party.
In truth, it’s hard to see why Harris wants to be Taoiseach outside of the fact he just really wants the country’s top job.
It was most remarkable that on the morning when Harris secured the support of his colleagues to be their leader, not one TD or senator was able to put their finger on what he would be able to bring to the job apart from enthusiasm.
How is Harris in any way different from Leo Varadkar, really?
He is more gregarious for sure, but the similarities between him and Varadkar are striking.
Both young men, obsessed with politics to the extent that it appears that neither had much of a hinterland outside of it, they rose to the top by being media savvy and plámásing their parliamentary party colleagues.
Varadkar, in his younger days at least, had an ideological bent. He was a Thatcherite and definitively right-wing.
It’s hard to say the same for the man who thinks labels are ‘often misrepresented’.
What is interesting about Harris’s ascent to the top job is his commitment to bringing Fine Gael back to its core roots, an implicit criticism of Varadkar’s tenure.
We are told that the party will focus on enterprise, farming and law and order.
But here again, Harris bears more than a striking resemblance to Varadkar, who became notorious for his political jabs to the right that kept the party faithful happy, while never really implementing any of the kites he flew.
I predict that, like Varadkar, there will be a lot of rhetoric and hot air from Harris, but very little action in Government from this newly revitalised Fine Gael.
The reason for this is simple. The reality is that Fine Gael can’t cough in coalition without the permission of Micheál Martin or Eamon Ryan.
Every proposal has to make it through the machinery of a department, then go to a Cabinet sub-committee, then to the leaders’ meeting, potentially back to the department if the proposal isn’t ready to see the light of day and then, finally, it might get onto the Cabinet agenda.
All of this can take six months at a minimum.
And there will be an election by this time next year.
In truth, everything Harris says and does now must be viewed through the prism of the next general election.
Everything he says about taking Fine Gael back to its ‘core values’ appears to be with the aim of catering, in the first instance, to the cohort of voters who feel that Fine Gael’s natural inclination to represent the ‘small-c’ conservatives in Ireland has been largely abandoned as the country has rapidly liberalised over the last decade.
Last month’s referendum results, the visceral hatred that the Greens face in rural Ireland and the backlash over the hate speech Bill shows that conservative Ireland is alive and kicking. It just doesn’t have any party that wants to represent it.
And there are challengers on the horizon.
Independent Ireland will soon set out its stall with senator and former justice minister Michael McDowell contemplating a return to the Dáil. If Fine Gael doesn’t want the conservative voters, someone else will.
In one of his most significant speeches, Harris gave the graveside oration at the 101st anniversary commemoration event for Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith last year.
He spoke of the need to build a ‘new social contract’, to remove any remaining access-to-education barriers and to bring homeownership back ‘into the reach
It’s hard to see why he wants to be Taoiseach
Selecting his new Cabinet is only one job of many for him
of those who need it’.
This chimes with what Harris told me about his vision for Fine Gael a number of weeks ago.
‘This party, for me, is about equality of opportunity. That is how I define my vision and approach. It’s the approach I’ve tried to bring to ministries that I’ve held,’ he said.
Harris has a vanishingly small window to set out his stall to the Irish public, to make the case that he is different from Varadkar – that his Fine Gael will be somehow different from the Government of which it is a part, and better than the Opposition – and therefore deserves to be in power again after the next election.
I suspect that Harris will try to use the next few days, both at the Ard Fheis and in the Dáil when he formally becomes Taoiseach, to both speak aspirationally about a new ‘social contract’ while also showing that small-c conservative instinct.
This can be done most explicitly when he selects his new Cabinet, which will send important signals about his priorities.
Moving Helen McEntee out of the Justice portfolio would send a clear signal that he is serious about his stance on law and order, for example.
But selecting his Cabinet is only one job of many now facing the Taoiseach-in-waiting. If he doesn’t get it right, he may go from nominating a Fine Gael Taoiseach, to becoming one, to leading the party into Opposition for the first time in 14 years.