100 days as Taoiseach: Has Simon Harris brought promised 'new energy'?
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When Simon Harris arrives at Chequers, the country retreat of the British prime minister today, his experience of 100 days in office will dwarf Keir Starmer’s mere 13.
The fact that Mr Harris has been well-known in Irish politics for nearly a decade-and-a-half — and has been a central figure in our recent history, especially in relation to covid — can lead you to forget that his tenure as Taoiseach has been so short.
Elected on April 9, Mr Harris promised “a new energy” and those close to him attest that this is more than a mere slogan, with media events regularly planned for before breakfast.
Mr Harris, they say, is “always working, always thinking”.
He is described as “thinking three steps ahead” of many people who come in contact with him, which makes for busy days that begin at 5am and see him in his office usually before 7.30am.
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Depending on the day, he can leave around 9pm.
There has been a concerted effort to get him out around the country because of the one thing that he cannot control — time.
Mr Harris has always been seen as someone who is in a rush.
He showed up for a Young Fine Gael conference aged 16 in his father’s suit, and was elected to the national executive.
It is no surprise to anyone that he has ended up where he is. While never openly flagging it, most in Fine Gael were never in doubt of his leadership aspirations.
However, few thought it would come this soon.
When Leo Varadkar announced that he would step down as leader of Fine Gael and taoiseach on March 21, the political world was genuinely shocked.
While some were not surprised — pointing to his overall demeanour in recent times — most felt that Mr Varadkar still had a lot of mileage left in his leadership and, while both Mr Harris and Helen McEntee had been touted as potential successors, neither was building a movement to oust him.
Indeed, the night of his announcement, the former taoiseach joked to Fine Gael members that he had been “unable to find anyone to stab him in the back, so he would fall on his sword”.
As is the way of these things, the second Mr Varadkar made his announcement, the attention turned to who would replace him.
Given Fine Gael’s electoral college system, the parliamentary party is effectively the entire ballgame — as Simon Coveney found out in 2017.
So when journalists hit the phones trying to work out who would have support if they were to run, everyone just wanted to “give Leo his day”.
However, once the newspapers were on stands and the country was waking up to a new future, Mr Harris’ surrogates were on the move.
Junior finance minister Neale Richmond, Mr Harris’ mentor and former tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald, Cork senator Tim Lombard, and senators Sean Kyne and Barry Ward all followed.
With Paschal Donohoe away at a European finance ministers’ meeting, by the time Ms McEntee appeared at a media event in Celbridge to announce she was out of the race, it was a Harris processional.
He would announce that evening that he was “all in”, and would make his first speech as party leader in Athlone that Sunday.
Mr Harris mapped out plans for the party to move forward, describing it as a “moment for Fine Gael to reset”.
“It is a moment for Fine Gael to reconnect. It is a moment for Fine Gael to renew our commitment to the people,” he said.
In his succession, Mr Harris needed to tread a line of offering something new, while refraining from criticism of his predecessor.
It was a hard sell: How do you tell the country you are what it needs without telling it what it had wasn’t working?
To counter that, the new Taoiseach — whose media persona is polished, earnest and occasionally elusive — promised a “new energy” and a “laser-focus on delivery”. Hence the pace.
Mr Harris is someone who many in Fine Gael say is deeply aware of both the power and scrutiny which comes with his office, knowing that he will be judged not in newspapers but in history books from here on out.
This has led, some in coalition partners feel, to an attempt to hijack every achievement of the Government.
One Fianna Fáil member says that there is a sense that “every bit of good news” will have Simon Harris attached to it, while bad news sticks to line ministers.
However, those who’ve worked with him — both on his side of the Coalition and among partners — say that he is genuinely interested in solutions. He is often praised for his ability to see unintended consequences of policy and his attention to detail, but some cite frustrations with his tendency to “comment as if he’s not in Government” about problems.
Of course, the knock on the “TikTok Taoiseach” when he assumed office was that he was obsessed with his image — all style and no substance.
The early appointment of a number of former journalists — co-chief of staff Sarah Bardon, press secretary Chris O’Donoghue, and deputy press secretary Ciara Phelan — to his senior team did little to quell that criticism.
However, Mr Harris has barely moderated his approach to communicating the Government’s message since his election.
He has posted 96 videos to the platform — going from straightforward updates to camera, to well-shot videos of Harris shaking hands and kissing babies, to even jumping on the Taylor Swift bracelet bandwagon.
During his time as health minister at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, Mr Harris was savvy in his use of the medium in creating a bond with the public by speaking to them directly and keeping them up-to-date with the rapidly changing circumstances.
This created a level of trust with some followers and it is not a tactic he has abandoned.
There is a general consensus from Fine Gael TDs that Mr Harris “hit the ground running”, and that this translated into a strong showing in the local and European elections in June.
Within the party, there is a sense that Mr Harris is quick to respond and engages with people directly, making them feel that they are being heard.
However, not all members agree. One bemoans the fact that Mr Varadkar was easier to get a text back from.
While his predecessor was always ready to voice opinions on a wide range of issues, Mr Harris has favoured a more focused strategy.
It is not that the new man has fewer opinions, but rather that he prefers to focus on the most pressing issues of the day.
Rather than dipping a toe in every pool, he tends to prefer to wade into the most prominent issues.
Political opponents lament his sense for a story the public will care about, pointing to his quick action on the case of Tori Towey — the Irish woman held in Dubai last week.
Speaking to this paper, Fine Gael TD Neale Richmond said Mr Harris “does more than talk the talk, and has shown over the last 100 days that he walks the walk”.
Mr Richmond said the Taoiseach has also shown that he is passionate and enjoys the work that he does, something which is echoed across the board by those who have seen him up close.
Many point to his preference for short, solutions-focused meetings over repetitive gatherings.
However, Mr Harris is seeing some of the same problems — most notably immigration.
His Government has struggled to quell localised anger at housing of asylum seekers, and housing in general, where homelessness continues to increase.
He has also been hit time and again with previous promises made while he was a minister, particularly his pledges that children with scoliosis would not have to wait more than four months for treatment.
Harris expects a lot from his team and he “doesn’t have time” for people who don’t give it their all, which has translated into a fast-paced premiership that hit the ground running — taking calls on his second day from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Rishi Sunak, Michelle O’Neill , and Emma Little-Pengelly — before jetting off to Brussels and Warsaw for meetings with EU leaders.
This did give him a slight bruising, as the opposition set at him for missing his first Leaders’ Questions slot in the Dáil on his second day in the job.
One of the first acts of the Harris-era was the scrapping of some of the more politically dicey issues, including the controversial Green Paper on disability reform and cancelling a proposed referendum on a unified patent court.
Depending on your side of the fence, these moves were either politically sharp or cowardly.
Some within the Green Party believe the latter, saying that Mr Harris “doesn’t seem to want to touch the complex things”.
Within days of his election, Mr Harris announced he would give a State apology to the survivors of the Stardust nightclub tragedy, following the findings of wrongful killing in all cases at the inquest.
The night before, he travelled to Artane to visit the site of the nightclub with leading campaigner Antoinette Keegan, where she gave him a badge commemorating the tragedy.
Ms Keegan has described Mr Harris as “the first decent Taoiseach” that families have dealt with in 40 years.
Seen as callow on the world stage upon his election, Mr Harris immediately set about trying to dispense with that idea and the long-mooted recognition of Palestine by Ireland offered him a chance to be front and centre on the world stage — even if it did ruffle Fianna Fáil feathers in the process.
In the end, Ireland, Spain, and Norway worked together in the background to recognise the Palestinian state on the same day.
A large part of this was the personal relationship between Harris and Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez. The two were in regular contact on the issue and announced the recognition in lockstep.
Whether it was the new leadership or the moves in the months previously, Fine Gael’s polling — which had been stagnant — improved as the local and European elections drew near.
Mr Harris ran a general election-style campaign for the locals, travelling over 10,000km, canvassing up and down the country, meeting with voters, and TikTokking every last bit of it.
It worked, largely, with the party losing just 10 local seats and one European, prompting questions on when Mr Harris would put himself before the electorate for a second term.
While many assume this will come some time in October or November, some say that Mr Harris will want to “go the distance” to next March.
One person described Mr Harris as “an incredibly lucky general”, with his first meeting with Keir Starmer falling on the 100th day of his premiership.
However, one Fine Gael member says that this is uncharitable, that Mr Harris “does work hard”, and he is not responsible for the circumstances around him.
What has been missing from the early days of a Harris reign has been any real sign of a long-term vision, though this is understandable. Sources say it is likely that we will see “who Simon really is” over the summer months as he begins to lay out his long-term goals and his first budget.
One Fine Gael source says that this will likely see developments in the disability sector — a particular passion of Mr Harris.
It is a long way from the early days of 2020, when Mr Harris was facing a second no-confidence motion. Is that luck? Or hard work? The next 100 days will tell us more.