With the election date now all but settled, politics enters a brief interregnum as the Dáil goes into recess for a week before what is anticipated to be a final flurry of legislative desk-clearing in preparation for the official commencement of the campaign. Meanwhile, furious activity is already underway as parties put the finishing touches to their candidate selections and a final tweak to their strategies.
Nowhere will this be more true than in Fine Gael. The prize for Simon Harris and his party would be historic; a successful election result, they hope, will see them returned to government for a further full term. That would mean 19 years continuously in power, eclipsing the record held by Fianna Fáil under Éamon de Valera between 1932 and 1948. The circumstances are rather different; three Fine Gael taoisigh – and one tánaiste – have made a number of different arrangements in order to remain in government since 2011.
But the remarkable fact remains that after all this time, Simon Harris goes into this election as the most popular political leader, with Fine Gael as the most popular party. That makes them the prime targets for attacks from opponents of all political stripes. It will be particularly intriguing to see how Fianna Fáil, competing for the same votes in many constituencies, will approach the task.
Fine Gael has one clear Achilles’ heel. The announcement that Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys will not stand again means the party goes into this election with fewer than half of the TDs elected at the last one. If incumbency is an electoral advantage, as most research suggests, then the party is carrying a significant handicap as it approaches the starting line.
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If the Taoiseach is seeking a model for how to overcome that disadvantage, he need only glance across the floor of the Dáil. In 2020, Sinn Féin’s late surge elected a crop of new TDs on the coattails of an energetic, presidential-style campaign by Mary Lou McDonald that chimed with a mood for change among the electorate.
Can Fine Gael repeat the trick? Harris has certainly reinvigorated his party in the six months since he became leader. The energy and communication talents he has brought to the job appear to have won back some of the voters who had drifted away from the party in recent years. He has also been a lucky general; Sinn Féin’s implosion has changed the electoral calculus on the potential shape of the next government in his favour.
A question remains, though, as to whether the skills which have brought Harris to this point will survive the harsher scrutiny of his party’s record and the inevitable pitfalls that will come in the campaign proper. Across the country, aspirant Fine Gael TDs will no doubt be fervently hoping that they will.