Simon Harris is the first populist leader of Fine Gael, and the Taoiseach who has ended analogue politics. As a politician he has an astonishing breadth of reach, but uncertain depth. Today marks the end of the traditional builders’ holidays. Even a generation ago, yesterday’s Feast of the Assumption signalled in a different culture that summer had peaked. As recently as last year, the traditional political lull of August was largely observed. Now it is a new era.
Harris is perfect for an era that can’t bear silence or stillness. On Wednesday, there was a message on social media from our left-handed leader on #internationallefthandersday. Another pictured him with the returned women Olympians who are he says “Mnásome”! Who wouldn’t agree? Lest it be all fun and games, he videoed from the doorsteps in Cabra on a lunchtime canvass with Paschal Donohoe. It was just an ordinary day for an extraordinary Taoiseach.
It is extraordinary only because it is new to the mainstream here. This is the digitalisation of democracy by a 37-year-old leader who believes he should perform his job as he does it. There was no traditional end of term sit down with the political correspondents because there is no end of term. For him August is just like April.
It is working in one sense. His party is now going forwards not backwards and he won’t stop until a general election is over. The intensity is not new for Harris, but as Taoiseach he is performing on a larger scale than what he has spent years doing to propel himself upwards towards the limelight of attention and the altitude of power. From his political nadir as minister for health at the last general election, he was ready to step forward without any opposition in Fine Gael, when the leadership unexpectedly became available.
A generation ago, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair pioneered the politics of always-on campaigning. Bertie Ahern was the personification of the phenomenon here. Looking back, it seems languid by comparison. Enda Kenny and Leo Varadkar lived through it, but Harris is the first Taoiseach who politically understands the consequences of the fact that the audience has fragmented. In the era of Clinton, Blair and Ahern there was still a national conversation. It was the last heyday of linear television, national radio and newspapers. Harris’s stream of synthetically casual interjections online is for people who may seldom read a newspaper or tune into major news programmes on air, and they are important.
Because we no longer have a real national conversation, we concoct citizens’ assemblies to pretend there is one
The national audience is deeply divided. This is a country where having once all gone to Mass and to the match together, a generation later, the national fireside was The Late Late Show. We went from a culture of discretion where we said nothing to nobody, to one where Gay Byrne and Marian Finucane became national confessors. Whispering into their ear on-air was automatic celebrity. Although recent, it too is past. The analogue era is over.
Digitised democracy is streams of concurrent but barely connected conversation operating in different realities. Because we no longer have a real national conversation, we concoct citizens’ assemblies to pretend there is one. Entertainment was always part of media and politics. Now it is the driver of attention in a value chain at the summit of which is advertising and the revenue it generates. Harris may cry about the cesspit of social media, and threaten action, but he has a Faustian pact with the medium he wants to reform.
Outside the electronic ether, on the streets, house prices have risen by a further 8.6 per cent in the last year. Our population is growing at a rate of nearly four people for every new home built. It is an analogue fact that we are not running fast enough to stand still. Like migrants in tents on city streets, big problems cannot be magicked away by emphatic statements.
Harris has, with skill and luck, moved ahead of his problems without necessarily confronting them. In Health, the legacy of a gross underestimation of the cost of the National Children’s Hospital and a flawed contract, which is the source of the problem since, is a living legacy. His immediate response to the CervicalCheck cancer scandal was equally flawed and shifting blame seemed as important as taking responsibility. After the 2020 election, of which he was an approximate cause, Covid-19 rescued him. In the moment when clear communication mattered above all, he was the right man for the job.
In Higher Education, his response to the strategically imperative issue of third-level funding was to avoid the issue of student fees, and insist on additional government funding. That has partially bridged the gap, and he promises more. It is a politics that comes at an enormous cost. Government spending has surged by 47 per cent in the last five years.
There is now no trace left of the Fine Gael party Harris was elected for as a new TD in 2011. Defeat on water charges was the abandonment of values. Varadkar’s hauteur prevented him being politically successful as a populist, his outlandish public spending notwithstanding. Harris, however, completely understands that, digitally, we are all isolated and on tenterhooks. His Nixonian restlessness is perfect for the age. He is now in a race against time, as he seeks again to politically move ahead of problems that will not go away.