The Easter bunny did not come early for Fine Gael this year. A devastating Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll for the party before the weekend confirmed that, as I’ve written previously, Fine Gael made the same mistake with Simon Harris as it did with Leo Varadkar. The party convinced itself that the personal ambitions of an individual member would connect with the broader public. Varadkar’s leadership was electoral kryptonite. Now the self-declared “new energy” has failed to materialise.
Even worse for Harris – his leadership popularity falling four points and his party three – is the sense that he’s high on his own supply. He legged it around Ireland on the campaign trail in a manner that often had the air of an am-dram version of The Thick of It played at double-speed – where he snapped at a voter who had the guts to bring their concerns directly to him, and rattled off talking points on television and radio with the tempo of a Red Bull-addled kid at a spelling bee. Now he has brought that mode to foreign shores.
He recently wrote a homework report – sorry, an inside look – at “his hectic week” for the Business Post. “A momentous week starts with an interview with Pat Kenny on Newstalk,” the diary began. We were then given a breathless rundown of All The Important Things Simon Did In His Important Job: “I have the first of what will be several bilateral calls with my EU counterparts”; “After lunch with Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić-Radman at Iveagh House”; “A call with Antonio Tajani, the Italian foreign minister, in the afternoon is a chance to get his perspective”; “It’s another busy day and I am in the office before 7am to prepare for more trade calls, including with my Swedish counterpart Benjamin Dousa”; I’ll stop here, because it keeps going and going.
What is the point of these performative declarations of busyness? Who is it for? It feels needy, self-important, self-congratulatory. Phone calls, media interviews, being briefed on things – that’s your job.
Fine Gael’s Red Bull-style new energy fizzled out with a grubby deal and a crushing poll
Why are most new housing schemes in Dublin city so terrible?
No wonder graduates turn away from Ireland and towards Terminal 2
Michael Lowry gave two fingers to the public. Their message back to the Government is equally concise
I’m sure the men and women of this country, as they are unloading endless washing machines, wrangling kids to school, struggling with rent, feeling aghast at hospital waiting lists, looking for school places, being left in the lurch with childcare, getting outbid on homes, stretched to the pin of their collars with the cost of living, horrified by Israel’s continuing bombardment of Gaza, were captivated by Harris’s “hectic week”. Of course, everyone is worried about the impact of Trump’s tariffs, particularly on the pharmaceutical sector, but getting in the weeds about your schedule is not winning nor relatable “content”.
[ Simon Harris boom well and truly bust in latest poll findingsOpens in new window ]
This, once again, is a great example of Fine Gael’s inside-voice: we’re great, our leader is great, look at all the great things we’re doing, why doesn’t everybody think we’re great? Yet the outcome of Fine Gael’s current reign in Government with Harris at the helm is the party plummeting to a 30-year-low in the polls. Things get worse: among 25- to 34-year-olds, Fine Gael support is 6 per cent; Sinn Féin: 42 per cent. Ouch.
Sinn Féin – up six points overall – is rising because people were genuinely irritated by the speaking rights chicanery, how slow the Government was to start, and the grubby deal with Michael Lowry. Labour and the Social Democrats are also up a point each. Ivana Bacik knew exactly what she was doing when she took to the Late Late Show to pull back the curtain on Government negotiations, saying by the time Labour sat down for chats, a deal was already done. Sixty four per cent of people think Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were wrong to do that deal. Lowry is an albatross around this Government’s neck.
Fine Gael slumps as Sinn Féin returns to top spot in our poll
The public likes Sinn Féin in opposition, hence the upswing in its popularity. The problem for Sinn Féin is that they’re not sure about the party for Government. Why? Because Sinn Féin talks out of both sides of its mouth on too many things. It wimped out on taking a principled stand against the anti-immigration empty vessels. Sinn Féin’s popularity is soft, swaying, fluctuating. So, how could the party consolidate it? I think a lot of people are encouraged by the opposition appearing slightly more cohesive in this Dáil than in the past. The signs are obvious: build a left-wing alternative Government option people can vote for. In order to do this, however, Sinn Féin does actually have to be left-wing.
One of the most interesting examples of mainstream political movement-building right now is Fighting Oligarchy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders’s American speaking tour. Speaking truth to power with integrity works. Besides reaching the public where they’re at, thus taking the fight against authoritarianism to the people, Ocasio-Cortez has raised $9.6 million in three months – more than double her next-best fundraising in any quarter (which was the $4.4 million she raised in the summer of 2020). At a time when people are frayed and afraid, they are gathering in their tens of thousands to listen to two leaders insist that a better way is possible. Now, that’s a new energy.
