ENTER HARRIS
Honeymoon will be brief as Harris gets his heart’s desire He’s an accidental and obsessive politician, but Simon Harris says he’s Enda Kenny with a twist, writes
For the better part of the last decade, Simon Harris has spoken privately of his ambition to be Fine Gael leader and taoiseach. Preparation for this moment intensified over the last two years as it became clear Leo Varadkar’s political fortunes were waning — but still, no one was prepared for the political earthquake the Taoiseach triggered last Wednesday.
“You always thought the day was coming,” said one Harris confidant. “But no one thought it was coming the way it has.”
Within minutes of Varadkar’s announcement, Harris’s phone began to melt down with calls and texts. There was no war room, no whiteboard, just a spreadsheet of the parliamentary party hastily printed out.
Paul Kehoe, the former defence minister and a veteran of Fine Gael leadership battles, was among the first to pledge his allegiance and was involved in brokering the deal with Heather Humphreys — a darling of rural Fine Gaelers, who had herself toyed with running.
She backed Harris on the understanding she will be his deputy leader in Fine Gael. But not all of the many calls Harris had with ministers, TDs and senators last week were like that.
“You don’t expect me to make any promises, do you?” he asked one backer.
In the frenzy of phone calls and texts, Harris never had a chance to have a proper conversation with his wife, Caoimhe, about the seismic events of the day. One TD who spoke to him that night said Harris told them: “I have been looking for this all my life and she knows that.”
Perhaps this chaotic sequence of events was inevitable for the selfdescribed “accidental politician”.
The eldest of three children of Bart, a taxi driver, and Mary, a retired SNA, Harris’s involvement in politics was sparked by his brother, Adam, who was diagnosed with autism as a child. At 15, the young Simon was organising meetings and harassing politicians for better services. He had a brief dalliance with Fianna Fáil and dropped out of journalism and French in DIT after a year as his politics hobby grew into an obsession.
Those who know Harris don’t think he has any other hobbies, interests or even many friends outside politics. There is, however, a small group of pals from his native Greystones who went on his stag to Munich, along with a few politicos, before he married paediatric nurse Caoimhe Wade in 2017.
After abandoning Fianna Fáil, whose support was cratering around 2008, Harris began working for Frances Fitzgerald of Fine Gael and was elected to Wicklow County Council in 2009. In those early days, he managed to annoy the party’s press officers by writing his own statements.
His enthusiasm — or unhealthy obsession — was such that a friend recalls rooming with Harris at a wedding where, despite a heavy night’s drinking, the aspiring TD was up early the following morning, bashing out a press statement on his laptop.