Ireland’s parliament has elected Simon Harris as the country’s new and youngest-ever prime minister, to succeed Leo Varadkar following his surprising resignation last month.
On Tuesday, parliament members erupted in cheers as Harris’s nomination was confirmed 88-69, after securing support from some independent lawmakers, as well as his coalition partners Fianna Fail and Green Party.
The 37-year-old former health and higher education minister, best known for helping steer Ireland’s initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, was elected unopposed as the new leader of the centre-right Fine Gael party last month, days after Varadkar’s shock exit.
“I do accept this nomination to serve as taoiseach [prime minister],” Harris said. “I commit to doing everything that I can to honour the trust that you have placed in me.”
Acknowledging his new government’s coalition partners who supported his candidacy, Harris said that he intends to lead “in the spirit of unity and collaboration and mutual respect”.
Pledging to re-energise and “reset” his party, Harris told a weekend conference of its members that he plans to steer it back towards “core values” like promoting business, farming, and law and order.
I am deeply honoured to become Taoiseach of this great country today.
I will be a Taoiseach for All, a Taoiseach that will work every day to realise the hopes, dreams and aspirations of all our people.
Harris’s election as prime minister caps a meteoric political rise. He joined the youth branch of Fine Gael at the age of 16 and quickly rose through its ranks.
A county councillor at the age of 22, he was elected to parliament as a 24-year-old in 2011. At the time he was the youngest member of parliament and was nicknamed “Baby of the Dail” (Irish parliament).
He was appointed health minister in 2016 aged just 29 and higher education minister in 2020.
Reshuffle
As Ireland’s new leader, Harris faces a formidable to-do list, including tackling the housing and homelessness crises, and criticism of government policy on asylum seekers.
One of his first jobs will be to choose his cabinet of ministers. He is due to announce a reshuffle of his Fine Gael team – which makes up seven of the 18 seats in the cabinet – on Tuesday.
Harris said last week that some contenders will be “rightly delighted”, while others will “feel a sense of personal disappointment”.
“I will do my very best to use the best judgement that I have in the mandate I’ve been given by this party to put together the best cabinet,” he added.
When he was selected last month, Harris told party’s members that he would repay their faith with “hard work, with blood, sweat and tears, day in and day out, with responsibility, with humility and with civility”.
He also said he would pursue a “more planned and sustainable” immigration policy, following increased tension over the issue, and that he would “fight against the dangers of populism”.
With a reputation for slick communication skills, Harris will also urgently seek to galvanise his struggling party, which lags in polls as key elections loom.
Ireland votes in local and European parliament polls on June 7, while the next general election must be held by March 2025.
Fine Gael slumped to third place at the last general election in 2020, well behind left-wing, nationalist Sinn Fein, which secured the largest share of the vote.
In the last three years, polls have put Sinn Fein, which backs unification with Northern Ireland, a British province, as the preferred choice to lead the next government.
Before Harris, Varadkar was the country’s youngest-ever leader when first elected at age 38, as well as Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister. His mother is Irish and his father is Indian, which also made Varadkar Ireland’s first biracial taoiseach.
In March, Varadkar, 45, said it was the right time for him to step aside. “My reasons for stepping down now are personal and political, but mainly political,” he said without elaborating.
FREDERICTON – A look at Blaine Higgs, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick.
Born: March 1, 1954.
Early years: The son of a customs officer, he grew up in Forest City, N.B., near the Canada-U.S. border.
Education: Graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1977.
Family: Married his high-school sweetheart, Marcia, and settled in Saint John, N.B., where they had four daughters: Lindsey, Laura, Sarah and Rachel.
Before politics: Hired by Irving Oil a week after he graduated from university and was eventually promoted to director of distribution. Worked for 33 years at the company.
Politics: Elected to the legislature in 2010 and later served as finance minister under former Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward. Elected Tory leader in 2016 and has been premier since 2018.
Quote: “I’ve always felt parents should play the main role in raising children. No one is denying gender diversity is real. But we need to figure out how to manage it.” — Blaine Higgs in a year-end interview in 2023, explaining changes to school policies about gender identity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
GATINEAU, Que. – Treasury Board President Anita Anand will take on the additional role of transport minister this afternoon, after Pablo Rodriguez resigned from cabinet to run for the Quebec Liberal leadership.
A government source who was not authorized to speak publicly says Anand will be sworn in at a small ceremony at Rideau Hall.
Public Services and Procurement Minister Jean-Yves Duclos will become the government’s new Quebec lieutenant, but he is not expected to be at the ceremony because that is not an official role in cabinet.
Rodriguez announced this morning that he’s leaving cabinet and the federal Liberal caucus and will sit as an Independent member of Parliament until January.
That’s when the Quebec Liberal leadership race is set to officially begin.
Rodriguez says sitting as an Independent will allow him to focus on his own vision, but he plans to vote with the Liberals on a non-confidence motion next week.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has called an election for Oct. 21, signalling the beginning of a 33-day campaign expected to focus on pocketbook issues and the government’s provocative approach to gender identity policies.
The 70-year-old Progressive Conservative leader, who is seeking a third term in office, has attracted national attention by requiring teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred names and pronouns of young students.
More recently, however, the former Irving Oil executive has tried to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.
At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three and there was one Independent and four vacancies.
J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, said the top three issues facing New Brunswickers are affordability, health care and education.
“Across many jurisdictions, affordability is the top concern — cost of living, housing prices, things like that,” he said.
Richard Saillant, an economist and former vice-president of Université de Moncton, said the Tories’ pledge to lower the HST represents a costly promise.
“I don’t think there’s that much room for that,” he said. “I’m not entirely clear that they can do so without producing a greater deficit.” Saillant also pointed to mounting pressures to invest more in health care, education and housing, all of which are facing increasing demands from a growing population.
Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon. Both are focusing on economic and social issues.
Holt has promised to impose a rent cap and roll out a subsidized school food program. The Liberals also want to open at least 30 community health clinics over the next four years.
Coon has said a Green government would create an “electricity support program,” which would give families earning less than $70,000 annually about $25 per month to offset “unprecedented” rate increases.
Higgs first came to power in 2018, when the Tories formed the province’s first minority government in 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — the first province to go to the polls after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a majority.
Since then, several well-known cabinet ministers and caucus members have stepped down after clashing with Higgs, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on policies that represent a hard shift to the right side of the political spectrum.
Lewis said the Progressive Conservatives are in the “midst of reinvention.”
“It appears he’s shaping the party now, really in the mould of his world views,” Lewis said. “Even though (Progressive Conservatives) have been down in the polls, I still think that they’re very competitive.”
Meanwhile, the legislature remained divided along linguistic lines. The Tories dominate in English-speaking ridings in central and southern parts of the province, while the Liberals held most French-speaking ridings in the north.
The drama within the party began in October 2022 when the province’s outspoken education minister, Dominic Cardy, resigned from cabinet, saying he could no longer tolerate the premier’s leadership style. In his resignation letter, Cardy cited controversial plans to reform French-language education. The government eventually stepped back those plans.
A series of resignations followed last year when the Higgs government announced changes to Policy 713, which now requires students under 16 who are exploring their gender identity to get their parents’ consent before teachers can use their preferred first names or pronouns — a reversal of the previous practice.
When several Tory lawmakers voted with the opposition to call for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from his cabinet. And a bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
