Taoiseach might do well to heed Willie O’Dea’s advice and go for an early election

● With tentative signs of a revival in fortunes, seizing the day could return the Coalition to power yet

Simon Harris was five years old, and no doubt lobbying his teachers for better facilities for senior infants, when the most consequential reshuffle in recent political history burst upon the nation.

In 1992, Albert Reynolds — the last of the buccaneering taoisigh — took his cutlass to the cabinet he’d inherited from Charlie Haughey, who he had deposed after a year of manoeuverings. He rightly suspected many of them of disloyalty and dispensed with such Fianna Fáil titans as Gerry Collins, Mary O’Rourke and Ray Burke.

In all, he sacked eight ministers and nine ministers of state, jauntily observing to his press secretary that he could have done with a revolving door in his office to speed up the comings and goings.

It was, said a Progressive Democrat minister, “like a bomb going off at the heart of government”. As they scrambled unharmed from the rubble, Reynolds’s coalition partners knew things would never be the same. The shockwaves from his bold initiative rocked Fianna Fáil — and continue to ripple across the political system.

All subsequent reshuffles have been relatively timid and predictable, and with good reason. Even though he governed with Dessie O’Malley’s Progressive Democrats, and later with Labour under Dick Spring, Reynolds never internalised what we all know now — that one-party government was gone for good.

He might have brokered the peace process and been central to the IRA ceasefire — but his partners remained suspicious of the impulsive nature behind that initial and dramatic reshuffle. The relationships never recovered, the PDs departing over a slight about Des O’Malley, coaxed from Reynolds without too much difficulty when giving his evidence to a tribunal on beef exports.

Dick Spring’s patience with Reynolds — never abundant — ran out over a bizarre row about the extradition of a child abuser. In each case, the root cause was a lack of trust between coalition parties. The lesson for subsequent governments could not have been clearer.

Simon Harris might have been a small child at the time, but he has shown since then that he has absorbed the many lessons of political history. He is the first taoiseach since Bertie Ahern for whom the only priority is the next election — and he will do nothing that might harm his chances of returning to office.

Enda Kenny was focused on rebuilding a shattered economy; Leo Varadkar was an easily distracted technocrat; Micheál Martin’s preoccupation was a restive party — but Harris has a general election firmly top of his agenda. That means reshuffles that don’t frighten the Fine Gael horses, and don’t spook the Fianna Fáil or Green ones either.

He will not have missed the warning shots from Willie O’Dea in this newspaper last week, grumbling over the attention being paid to the changes in Fine Gael.

Neither will he have worried too much about observers lamenting a tame reshuffle that left no blood on the Fine Gael carpet.

Any temptation to make his mark by demoting his justice minister was clearly tempered by the standing of the McEntee clan within the party. In the run-up to an election, there is no place for a disaffected faction.

Harris has an appetite for office that ultimately deserted his predecessor, and he is clearly focused on the general election.

Varadkar may well have reasoned that if he was indifferent to the charms of another term as taoiseach, he plainly could not be the man to lead his party in a campaign.

You cannot say that about Harris. Even before he was confirmed in office, he was pulling all the electoral levers he could lay his hands on.

The rehabilitation of Phil Hogan, the wooing of Kate O’Connell, the overtures to Michael Ring and others... they all have one aim in mind — breaking the mould of the party’s record in the last two elections, where zany policy priorities were set and seats needlessly squandered.

He has started the process of clearing the decks. First, long-fingering the referendum on a European patent court. This proposal has been hanging around for five years. Seen as technical but innocuous, it is much beloved by some officials who periodically slip it into cabinet memos when their political masters are distracted.

Harris rightly fears that an opporvoters tunistic opposition might weaponise any referendum, as his Government recovers from the twin defeats of last month. Win or lose, there is no point in wasting political capital supporting a bureaucratic and obscure proposal that will attract zero popular interest.

Harris is also engaged in a delicate diplomatic minuet with Ursula von der Leyen over Gaza.

Along with other European People’s Party (EPP) colleagues, the EU Commission boss was furious at Varadkar’s surprise initiative when he teamed up with Spain’s Pedro Sanchez to demand the EU review its trade links with Israel over its conduct in Gaza, disrupting a carefully constructed Europe-wide balance on a tricky issue.

Last week we saw the new Taoiseach effectively acknowledge that the demarche was a dead duck, acknowledging only that von der Leyen had “listened” to arguments in the joint letter — even as Commission sources were insisting there was no date for any such change in policy. It was a far cry from his predecessor’s insistence that he “expected the Commission to take the letter seriously”.

Harris will be anxious to mend fences with the EPP, as the bloc will be a key powerbroker after this year’s European elections.

These are early signs — but they all point to a Taoiseach who wants a united Coalition focused on re-election. But when will that chance come, this year or next? There were many around Leinster House last week, inside and outside Fianna Fáil, who nodded their heads at O’Dea’s scornful dismissal of any fixation on a 2025 poll in these pages last Sunday. The veteran Fianna Fáil backbencher warned his colleagues of the morale-sapping effect of poor European election results, compounded by losses in any consequent byelections if the Government choses to stay long enough to fight them. Many share his worry that Harris is backing himself into a corner if he plans to wait until next year. But amid all the electoral foreboding for the Government, there was some good news for them in the latest Ireland Thinks/Sunday Independent poll. Sinn Féin still holds the largest share of popular support at 26pc, but it is on a slide as better-off rural fall away. Fine Gael is at 21pc and Fianna Fáil at 16pc — but FF is showing signs of recovering support among the group now abandoning Sinn Féin, according to other polls.

In that context, it is not hard to imagine a local election outcome more favourable than many predict for the main government parties, and certainly better than the European poll where they are sure to suffer losses.

Five years ago, fewer than 10pc of voters opted for Mary Lou McDonald’s party in a miserable result. Sinn Féin will improve on that, but the party has struggled to attract candidates. Hitting 20pc on the day might be a big ask.

Even if they do, the outcome might well see the three biggest parties converging on a 20:20:20 split. Anything resembling this scenario would clearly demonstrate to fearful government backbenchers that a return to power is clearly within their grasp. And that, in turn, might prompt our new Taoiseach to reflect on O’Dea’s advice and seize the opportunity in 2024.

One way or another, as last week’s events show, in Simon Harris’s world “it’s the election, stupid”.