Simon Harris, who was appointed Ireland’s youngest ever prime minister on Sunday, hopes his social media skills and fresh faces can save Ireland’s political parties as the election approaches.
The 37-year-old, dubbed the “TikTok Taiiseeach” by the media (the name of the Irish Prime Minister, pronounced “Tee-shock”), beat the previous record holder, his predecessor Leo Varadkar (38) when he did so in 2017 year when he held the top job.
After Varadkar’s shock resignation on Wednesday, Harris joined the race to lead the centre-right Fine Gael party and became prime minister by default.
By lunchtime on Thursday he had secured the support of a majority of his party colleagues, prompting all other rivals to rule themselves out, and his coronation was confirmed on Sunday.
Harris told party members he would repay their faith with “hard work, blood, sweat and tears, responsibility day in and day out, humility and civility.”
The incoming leader said his focus would be on “law and order”, developing a “more planned and sustainable” immigration policy and combating “the dangers of populism”.
rise to prominence
Harris’s status rose rapidly when she was inevitably elected as Taoiseach after the prorogation of the Irish Parliament ended on April 9.
He was born in 1986 and grew up in Greystone, a coastal town near Dublin, the son of a taxi driver.
After a year, he dropped out of university courses in journalism and French in Dublin to focus on an already promising political career.
Harris entered politics by campaigning for autism services for her brother, who has autism, and later founded a charity.
He joined Fine Gael’s youth wing at the age of 16 and quickly rose through the party ranks.
A county councilor at 22, he was elected to Parliament in 2011 at the age of 24, when he was the youngest member and was dubbed the “Parliament Baby”.
In 2016, at the age of 29, he was appointed Minister of Health.
“My career has been a little weird in a lot of ways… Life has happened a lot faster than I expected,” he told Hot Press magazine in 2022.
Harris has served as health secretary for more than four years, including during the coronavirus pandemic, and has been praised for her communication skills despite harsh criticism over nursing home deaths and occasional gaffes.
He said he could be a “terrible old idiot” at times, after saying Covid-19 was referring to the 18 previous coronaviruses rather than the year it first appeared.
Harris was also embroiled in controversy over the new hospital project, while the opposition threatened a vote of no confidence over overcrowded wards, leading Varadkar to call a 2020 general election in which Fine Gael fell to third place.
Social media savvy
Harris, a father of two who is married to a cardiac nurse, has become one of Ireland’s most high-profile politicians thanks to his popularity on social media, particularly TikTok.
He has been minister of higher education since 2020, and even his critics acknowledge that he is a talented communicator.
Harris has 1.4 million “likes” on TikTok and hundreds of thousands of followers on X and Instagram, where he posts content to his audience almost daily.
But some of his videos and comments have been seen as trying too hard to appeal to younger generations.
“Relax – I think everyone needs to take a step back,” Harris told everyone at a stormy parliamentary committee meeting.
“All young people know what ‘relaxation’ is,” he told parliament the next day.
With his youth and slick communication skills, his opponents derided him as “Leo 2.0”, a continuation of an “urban” style of politics out of touch with the wider electorate.
But for supporters, his enthusiasm could re-energize Fine Gael, which remains a distant third in the polls with 10 weeks to go until local and European parliamentary elections and a year to a general election. .
“He is energetic and ambitious,” one party colleague told The Irish Times.
“He’s cute, cunning and shrewd,” said another.
Follow us on Google news ,Twitter , and Join Whatsapp Group of thelocalreport.in
