The Easter bunny did not come early for Fine Gael this year. A devastating Irish Times/IPSOS B & A poll for the party before the weekend confirmed that, as I’ve written previously, Fine Gael made the same mistake with Simon Harris as it did with Leo Varadkar. The party convinced itself that the personal ambitions of an individual member would connect with the broader public. Varadkar’s leadership was electoral kryptonite. Now the self-declared “new energy” has failed to materialise.

Even worse for Harris – his leadership popularity falling four points and his party three – is the sense that he’s high on his own supply. He legged it around Ireland on the campaign trail in a manner that often had the air of an am-dram version of The Thick of It played at double-speed – where he snapped at a voter who had the guts to bring their concerns directly to him, and rattled off talking points on television and radio with the tempo of a Red Bull-addled kid at a spelling bee. Now he has brought that mode to foreign........

© The Irish Times