Harris took silent control of the party.. then said: I’m ready to serve
IN A private meeting of Fine Gael TDs and senators this week, Leo Varadkar joked to those present, ‘I couldn’t find anyone to stab me in the back, so I fell on my sword instead.’
And it is a measure of Simon Harris’s subtlety that he never engaged in an actual plot against the Taoiseach.
A source close to Mr Harris noted: ‘Leo, having taken away the leadership from Enda [Kenny] under his nose, would be very attuned to anybody trying to do to him what was done to Enda, and would respond vengefully.’
And Mr Varadkar must have watched with some astonishment as Mr Harris, without leaving a fingerprint, assumed full control of the party before publicly confirming he wanted to be party leader and Taoiseach.
Intriguingly, despite being at the forefront of political life for almost as long as Mr Varadkar, an air of mystery still surrounds the true nature of the still young man who always wanted, openly, to play the king.
But despite the ease with which Simon Harris’s bloodless coup was managed, there is no shortage of critics of the new leader.
Some accused him of being a political chameleon who doesn’t believe in anything particularly strongly. It has been noted of his political career that he started off in Fianna Fáil (with Dick Roche, of all people), then joined Fine Gael as a conservative prolifer but became a liberal after the death of Savita Halappanavar and, latterly, one of the faces of the marriage-equality referendum. Others, however, would argue his journey simply reflects the one taken by Irish society as a whole.
One key strength that nobody can deny is his proven track record as a vote-getter; a skill he will need in spades to reverse his party’s recent electoral performances. After being parachuted into Wicklow in 2009 for the local elections – on the insistence of Fine Gael’s grand strategist Frank Flannery – Harris pocketed 3,119 votes (31.7% of the quota), without dislodging either of the two Fine Gael councillors already in situ.
One of the few Cabinet members who was not privately educated, he dropped out of a third-level course to prioritise politics under the wily tutelage of Frances Fitzgerald, and subsequently Heather Humphreys, who may be poised to become the new leader’s deputy.
In 2011, he was the youngest TD elected to the Dáil. He first came to the wider public’s attention with a JFK-style nomination speech for Enda
Kenny, telling a nation experiencing the tornado of austerity that: ‘Today, the period of mourning is over for Ireland. Today, we hang out our brightest colours and… we move forward yet again as a nation.’
He also caught the attention of RTÉ broadcaster Gay Byrne.
In 2016, Mr Byrne said of the young Harris on Lyric FM: ‘He’s very, very impressive. He has an answer for everything. He’s afraid of nobody.
‘There is a never a hesitation when he speaks.
‘It comes out at least 200 words a minute.
‘But he’s a smart young cove and probably one of the best speakers on television and radio, if you want to speak like an AK47.
I don’t think he’s up and coming. I think he’s already there,’ he said.
Though his subsequent rise was meteoric, such praise was rarer from his Fine Gael colleagues.
In his first senior ministry – the troublesome portfolio of Health – he experienced difficulties in areas such as the National Children’s Hospital, the CervicalCheck crisis and the National Maternity Hospital.
But these were balanced by a successful handling of the 2018 abortion referendum, and his steady oversight of the early days of the pandemic.
His communication skills are the source of considerable envy among some colleagues, one of whom observed: ‘He’s got the skills you need to dance at the highest levels of politics, and he can dance to any tune you play.’
With 234,800 followers on X, a further 169,000 on Instagram and 93,200 on TikTok, Mr Harris is a rare creature in a party which increasingly appears detached.
Despite his relative youth, the Taoiseach-in-waiting also has a solid ministerial track record.
Although, as one critic observed: ‘He left a trail of promises in his wake’, he managed to escape from Health relatively unscathed.
He performed ably as interim Justice Minister during Helen McEntee’s pregnancy leave.
And his most recent day job as Minister for Higher Education also helped him to nurture his leadership ambitions behind the scenes, freeing him up to tour the country meeting councillors and local TDs while announcing significant reforms in areas such as apprenticeships.
All of which meant when his moment came this week, he was ‘ready to serve’.