Simon Harris is elected leader of Fine Gael, Ireland will have its youngest prime minister ever

Ireland is expected to have its youngest-ever prime minister on Sunday when Simon Harris takes over as Fine Gael leader, replacing Leo Varadkar, who announced his resignation last week.

Harris, 37, is the government’s further and higher education minister and is the only candidate nominated to succeed Varadkar. Varadkar was the youngest former Prime Minister of Ireland and was also known as the Taoiseach.

Harris has won a flurry of support from within the United Irish Parliamentary Party and is expected to be formally elected as Taoiseach’s prime minister in April, after lawmakers return for the Easter holidays.

Fine Gael deputy leader Simon Coveney said: “I think he’s done a really good job of securing leadership in the most comprehensive way possible.”

Harris said he remained fully committed to the government plan agreed with coalition partners Fianna Fail and the Green Party. He has not ruled out a general election this year but insists such a poll is not his top priority.

Varadkar, 45, has served as prime minister twice, between 2017 and 2020 and since December 2022 sharing part of the job with Micheál Martin, the head of coalition partner Fianna Fáil.

When he was first elected at 38, he was the country’s youngest-ever leader and Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister. Varadkar’s mother is Irish and his father is Indian. He is also Ireland’s first mixed-race prime minister.

He played a leading role in the campaign to legalize same-sex marriage, which was approved in a referendum in 2015, and in the campaign to repeal the abortion ban in the 2018 vote.

He led Ireland in the years following Britain’s 2016 decision to leave the European Union. Brexit has had a huge impact on Ireland, an EU member state that borders Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom. Relations between Britain and Ireland were strained when Boris Johnson, a die-hard Brexit supporter, was leader of the U.K., but relations have tended to stabilize since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took office. Stablize.