Ireland is set to have its youngest ever prime minister after Simon Harris secured the leadership of the Fine Gael party in the central Irish town of Athlone on Sunday to replace Leo Varadkar, who announced surprise resignation last week.
Harris, the 37-year-old minister in charge of the Higher Education portfolio – although he is best known for helping to lead the country's initial response to the covid pandemic – was the only candidate to put his name forward. to succeed Varadkar, who had previously been Ireland's youngest Prime Minister, or, as the country calls him, the Taoiseach.
After gaining support within the party, Harris is expected to be formally elected prime minister by the Irish Parliament on April 9, after MPs return from the Easter break.
Harris will have more than a year to save the Fine Gael coalition from defeat in the parliamentary elections. Polls over the past three years have placed Sinn Féin, a left-wing party that supports unification with Northern Ireland, which is now a British province, as the favorite to lead the next government.
However, two more polls have confirmed a recent trend of falling support for Sinn Féin from peaks 12 to 18 months ago, although they generally again showed smaller parties and independent candidates as the beneficiaries before the government parties.
A Business Post and Red C poll before Varadkar's departure put Sinn Féin's lead over a stagnant Fine Gael at 6 percentage points, while a poll by The Irish Independent after he resigned showed a lead of 5 points after a small increase for Fine Gael.
Varadkar announced his retirement on Wednesday, causing widespread shock and taking even his closest political allies by surprise. He assured that Fine Gael would have a better chance of being re-elected with another leader.
Harris has spoken in recent days about how he became involved in politics as a "stubborn, bad-tempered teenager" upset by the lack of educational support for his autistic brother. He has tried to present himself as an "accidental politician", despite the fact that he has spent most of his adult life in Parliament.
He is one of the most visible Government Ministers in Ireland and a prominent media player. His large presence on social media led an opponent in Parliament to call Harris the “TikTok taoiseach”.
While the economy has grown strongly under Varadkar's tenure, successive governments, including Harris's, have struggled to address a decade-long housing crisis and, more recently, pressure from a record number of asylum seekers and refugees.
Inheriting a three-party coalition government that works on the basis of an agreed policy program will give Harris little room for major new policy initiatives.
