Simon Harris is not running for tánaiste. That should not be news, but it hasn’t sunk in with Fianna Fáil. Success would be Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael forming the next government. Continuity would be the office of taoiseach rotating again, and it would be Micheál Martin’s turn next. But Harris has other plans.
Fianna Fáil has a problem, and it is called Fine Gael. Simon Harris has personalised his party around himself to an extraordinary degree and it is working in the short term. But there is only a short term at stake if an election is imminent. He has broken out of the Fine Gael mould of better-off people telling others what is good for them. As self-satisfying as it was, it seldom had wider appeal. His father is a taxi man and his mother a special needs assistant. He has not got a degree, but he could be the smartest lad in the class. He hasn’t left any room for Fianna Fáil to overtake him on the inside lane.
Gone is the smugness that was his party’s preferred perfume. It derived inherited righteousness from treating the public purse as if it were its own, which it usually did. Instead, Harris is spending money like a drunken Fianna Fáil minister at the Galway races. The man has a brass neck, a silver tongue, and the undercarriage of a jockey. Fine Gael’s last remaining principle is the pursuit of power.
What Harris has done is successfully capture the impatience of the public mood. His fresh new energy is washing over the party like political Listerine.
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One person who is not impressed is Micheál Martin. Harris has Fine Gael at about 25 per cent in opinion polls compared to Fianna Fáil’s 20 per cent. He is outpacing Martin in personal popularity and eating his lunch in terms of political coverage. He is making Martin look like the status quo, and there is no public appetite for that. Due regard between them barely exists. Harris’s interventions this week while abroad about the safety of Irish troops serving in Lebanon tarmacked over his Coalition partner who is also Minister for Defence and Foreign Affairs. It is not how partnership works and not how one could work for long.
[ Trouble at the top? Relations between Simon Harris and Micheál Martin are frayedOpens in new window ]
Coalition leaders may once “have communicated directly and not through the media” as Martin complained in his speech last week to Dublin Chamber. As he went on to say “governing is much harder work than campaigning. It requires focus.” But the rub is that this Coalition only exists because he and Leo Varadkar led completely inept campaigns in 2020. Into the vacuum of those largely lifeless attempts at vote getting surged Sinn Féin. It was Martin who left them the most space, in the housing estates which his party largely evacuated.
There is frantic talk about an imminent election but, as Martin correctly insisted last week, “there have been no discussions about finishing our mandate early.” Except there has been one: the budget. It is rocket fuel for an election before Christmas and everyone involved knows it. There was eventually an election in February 2020 because separately Martin and Leo Varadkar dithered and stayed too long. Joan Burton scuppered Enda Kenny’s plan for an election in the autumn of 2015. Martin knows he has a veto now. If there isn’t an election within weeks, it will be because – notwithstanding the budget he co-authored on the implicit assumption of an election sooner rather than later – he has decided to stay.
Martin is dithering again. Sinn Féin may be on the back foot but it would take further reverses in a campaign that has not begun for it to go below 20 per cent on polling day and start to suffer seat losses. Fine Gael’s advantage is possibly overstated because it has real problems on the ground in Donegal, Meath West and Kerry. It should be in contention for a second seat in Cavan-Monaghan, but so far there is no sign of it. Fianna Fáil has fewer retirements, a good chance of a gain in Louth, and claims to be back in contention in Dublin South Central and elsewhere. On the other hand, Fine Gael plans to take its seat in Dublin Bay South and Wicklow.
Wherever it lands in the end, Harris knows he has momentum and believes he can lift his party by another percentage point or two. This would widen the gap between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil sufficiently to change the relationship. That means that either the principle of rotation, or its sequencing, is in play. Either is mission critical for Martin.
It is not just that the Government’s decision on the timing of an election is complicated by the interests of its constituent parties. The distinct interests of its leaders are also a factor. There is reason to bet the Harris phenomenon could not last a winter. An election in the spring would run on to government formation in early summer and a presidential election in the autumn. That might matter to Martin. The Government is primed for an election now. But it is much more complicated than that.