Leo Varadkar faces the biggest challenge of his political career as support for Fine Gael has fallen six points in the latest Irish Times/Ipsos poll. The party's campaign has become increasingly lively, dominated by recent missteps by Varadkar and a high-stakes televised debate looming.
Support for Fine Gael has fallen by six points in the latest Irish Times/Ipsos poll ahead of the 2024 general election. Since the start of the campaign, pundits and observers have complained that it has been dull and unexciting. That there have been few dramatic developments or sudden moves to grab people’s attention. Well, no longer.
The campaign has just got very lively indeed, and a huge amount now hangs on tomorrow evening’s televised debate between the three leaders of the largest parties. The biggest challenge of his political career, the fight of his life. An intense spotlight will fall on Harris – who, unlike his two main rivals for the Taoiseach’s job, has not been through this before – as the race enters the home straight. , an encounter which – of course – was filmed and went viral online. Harris scrambled to backtrack, fronting up and apologising. In truth, Harris wasn’t all that beastly to Fallon; at worst he was dismissive and impolite. Too much was probably made of it. But that’s what happens in an It was the second time in a matter of days that Harris found himself apologising or clarifying. At the first leaders’ debate – the 10-way boondoggle on RTÉ last Monday – he insisted that he had not “signed” the contract for the National Children’s Hospital when he was minister for health. He spent the following day insisting that he was not trying to dodge responsibility for the overspends. He may have been technically right. But sometimes that’s not what matters in an election campaign, is it? The Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll: the full results in chartsSource: Ipsos In truth, the Kanturk incident was the latest in a series of missteps for the Fine Gael campaign, which began with, and which have seen the party fritter away a substantial lea
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