Political honeymoon is now over for Harris, whose main mission is to minimise losses

The political honeymoon for Simon Harris, which lasted a piece of an afternoon, is already well and truly over, and the newly minted Taoiseach faces into challenges which make the Herculean tasks look like a doddle.

Across the 20th century, Fine Gael several times played political Tweedledum, leading “Anybody-But-Fianna-Fáil-Coalitions”, filling in for the “other crowd’s Tweedledee”, as the party founded by Éamon de Valera styled itself “the natural party of government”.

Ireland’s political culture has been slowly but definitively changing since 1973 – back when the two big political beasts of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael commanded the combined allegiance of up to 80pc of voters.

In February 2011, Fine Gael claimed a “political revolution” when it won an all-time record of 76 Dáil seats, and Fianna Fáil was driven close to extinction with just 20 TDs, including just one in Dublin.

Closer surveillance of those 2011 Fine Gael results showed that it really was just a very big win for “Tweedledum”, at a time when not only had Fianna Fáil imploded, but so had the global financial system at the very time when the Irish economy was left unduly exposed.

Since that great breakthrough, Fine Gael support has been in constant decline, and Fianna Fáil has similarly struggled to restore its once and recent glory days.

Expect increasing speculation about our political Tweedledum and Tweedledee merging. But that is for another day, for now we must look at what Ireland’s youngest ever Taoiseach is facing and assess the odds of him making a fist of things.

We recall a 24-year-old Harris came to the Dáil in March 2011 and soon began climbing the greasy pole of politics.

Becoming Taoiseach 13 years later is a remarkable achievement which must be acknowledged, and he undoubtedly is a politician of some substance.

But in the intervening years of Harris’s climb, his party has been in serious decline.

From 76 TDs in February 2011, Fine Gael lost 26 seats in February 2016, an outcome somewhat disguised by it remaining the largest Dáil party, and ultimately leading a minority government by grace of Fianna Fáil abstentions.

Harris’s predecessor, Leo Varadkar, became leader in June 2017, promising a revival for his party.

That did not happen as decline further continued in the 2020 general election when Fine Gael lost a further 15 Dáil seats.

Now, as we face another general election within a maximum of 11 months, these signs of decline continue.

Opinion polls put Fine Gael’s backing close to the outcome of the last general election, and more than a dozen heavy-hitting candidates will not stand again, with that number of refuseniks expected to grow.

Fine Gael stalwarts have good grounds to argue their achievements are undervalued. The party taking power from 2011-2016 led to the dreaded EU-IMF-ECB Troika, which had been effectively supervising Irish economic management, exiting on time, within the minimum term of attendance.

Fine Gael’s second term in government led to an effective response to Brexit and an excellent response to the Covid crisis.

Its third government coming has led to a cohesive three-party coalition which has quietly managed many crucial issues, notwithstanding acknowledged problems in key issues like health and housing.

Voter ingratitude may well be at epic levels. But parodying Bertolt Brecht, and calling on the electorate to resign, won’t do much.

The brutal reality is that in the last two general elections, Fine Gael has poorly judged the public mood and failed to realise that voters make choices on future prospects more than anything else. There were also some considerable campaign gaffes which inflicted harm.

Economic recovery brings its own problems and any gains at EU level, such as effective Brexit risk management, rarely translate into votes. It is an unfair world generally, and in politics especially.

So, what does the new Fine Gael leader do? The short answer is he must realise how hemmed in he is by circumstance.

The coalition is four-fifths through its five-year term and working to an agreed government programme.

Time is short, with local and European elections in just 10 weeks’ time – a general election is a maximum 11 months away.

He has already realised his biggest opportunity lies in injecting a new energetic image and outlining a longer-term vision beyond the final year of this Coalition’s term.

Beyond that, his mission will be about electoral loss minimisation.

‘The brutal reality Fine Gael faces is that in the last two general elections the party has poorly judged the public mood’