Some friendly advice for our next Taoiseach
WHATEVER the views on Simon Harris, the buzz back home is all about how Wicklow is getting its first Taoiseach.
But in Blessington, where I grew up, in the political wilderness of the Garden County’s west side, will we even notice?
Do people from Greystones even know where it is?
The only time I ever saw Harris west of the Sally Gap was when his face was plastered on a giant poster outside the local constituency clinic.
Even so, a sense of county pride means I’ve an initial warmth towards our new leader, despite the fact he’s probably the most Fine Gaely of Fine Gaelers ever to roam the earth.
He has good parents and a talented brother in the autism campaigner Adam Harris, whose early struggles inspired him to go into politics.
Harris was always highly opinionated and, like many opinionated people, prone to changing it.
Now he’s the most powerful person in the country, with that responsibility on his still-young shoulders. The fact Leo
Varadkar has the freedprisoner face of the fella in work who just handed in his notice is a warning of what lies ahead.
Fine Gael is falling apart at the seams, with a mass exodus of TDS, including Minister of State Josepha Madigan yesterday.
Even lifelong blueshirts say the party doesn’t represent them anymore.
But can he turn the crisis into an opportunity? Here’s my recommendations for what he should do, as one voter in his constituency.
First, remember, in the wise words of Trump: “Everything woke turns to s***.”
Fianna Fail stalwart Willie O’dea recently said something similar when he urged politicians to “stop playing to the woke gallery”.
Cue lots of posh types pretending not to know what woke is.
Well, we all know it, because we’ve been living under the yoke of it for nearly 10 years now.
It’s a “progressive” ideology of political correctness, identity politics and victimhood culture that wields its power through punishment tactics like cancel culture. It allows people to feel the virtue of supporting all the “right” causes while not having to actually do anything.
The double referendum defeat – ultimately about marriage and motherhood – was the end of that wheeze.
Its head was cut off with Varadkar’s resignation so let no more grow, like the Hydra of Greek mythology.
After a plague, two wars and a global cost of living crisis, it’s time to focus on real matters that affect everyday lives.
The Tiktok taoiseach should not let Twitter run the country.
Linked to that is Ireland’s lurch towards a form of totalitarianism.
Scrap the Hate Speech Bill – it’s wrong and it will ruin the country.
Nobody normal wants it. It makes a hate crime a subjective offence and reverses the age old presumption of innocence. It does not differentiate between intent and impact.
Stop talking down to people. There are too many elites in politics who think they know better than voters.
Harris is from a modest background, the son of a taxi driver and an SNA, who dropped out of college, so he should be more in touch than most.
Hopefully, that will mean the end of comments like Leo’s “bank of mum and dad” or how “one man’s rent is another man’s income|.
Finally, and most importantly, fix the housing crisis.
Government policy under Leo’s tenure created and maintained it until it got out of control and led to the ongoing crisis where workers cannot rent or buy.
Solve that and you’ll be the most popular Taoiseach in
decades.