The Coronation Of King Harris
Last Wednesday morning, numerous media outlets in the Twenty-Six Counties reported rumours of a coming political earthquake that would be sure to shake Leinster House to its core, with many hinting that the epicentre of this event was going to be Fine Gael headquarters on Mount Street Upper.
These rumours proved to be true, with leaks of Twenty-Six County Taoiseach Leo Varadkar resigning both as leader of Fine Gael and Taoiseach being confirmed by the party just after 12pm. Varadkar declared that he would step down as party leader with immediate effect, but would only abdicate his throne of Taoiseach when a successor was found - as luck would have it, Fine Gael had already selected a new king to coronate.
Even before Varadkar officially announced his resignation, a flurry of suggestions abound as to who would replace him, with media outlets publishing puff pieces on those they thought likely to capture the confidence of a majority of Fine Gael TDs. It quickly became clear that these TDs only had one man in mind, that being thirty-seven-year-old Wicklow TD Simon Harris.
Harris was gifted the leadership of Fine Gael, and by default the title of Taoiseach by party colleagues last Thursday, with those expected to challenge for the position pulling out and throwing their support behind Harris. Speaking of Harris, one of his Fine Gael parliamentary colleagues said “he came out of the womb wanting to be leader of a political party and Taoiseach of Ireland”.
That Sunday, when the deadline for nominations was reached, Harris was the only candidate, and so was duly ‘elected’ Fine Gael leader. Harris will officially become Taoiseach on the 9th of April when Leinster House returns from its easter recess and Leo Varadkar resigns his position.
Leo Varadkar announcing his resignation last week.
Who is Simon Harris?
Born in Greystones, County Wicklow in 1986, Harris was a member of Fianna Fáil in his youth before jumping ship to Fine Gael and eventually being elected to Wicklow County Council in the 2009 local elections at the age of just twenty-three. Harris was also successful in the 2011 general elections, securing the third seat in the Wicklow constituency, in doing so becoming the youngest TD in Leinster House at time.
Harris was conferred with the title of Minister of State at the Department of Finance in 2014, before then being named Minister for Health in 2016 by then Taoiseach Enda Kenny. During his tenure as Minister for Health, Harris made no secret of the disdain he held towards health workers and the general public.
In 2017, Harris let it be known that the state intended to handover ownership of the planned €300m National Maternity Hospital to the ‘Sisters of Charity’ - one of the four religious orders responsible for the running of the Magdalene Laundries in the Twenty-Six Counties. This was despite long-standing, strong objections from women's groups, medics, legal experts and many others against handing over a vital piece of health infrastructure to a religious order responsible for inflicting decades of pain and terror on countless numbers of women and children. The ‘Sisters of Charity’ later relinquished their ownership of the the hospital.
Harris also oversaw the disastrous handling of the CervicalCheck scandal in 2018, when the negligence and indifference of the Twenty-Six County establishment towards Irish women resulted in 206 of them developing cervical cancer after having had a misdiagnosed CervicalCheck smear test, a number of these women later died from the disease.
In January 2019, Harris threatened to financially penalise almost 40,000 hardworking nurses and midwives in the Twenty-Six Counties for daring to partake in picket lines to demand better pay and working conditions.
Just a month later, on the 20th of February, Harris was lucky to survive a motion of no-confidence tabled against him over the skyrocketing costs of the New National Children’s Hospital, with the unfinished project now on track to cost a whopping €2.24 billion. This is over 500 million euro more than the 2019 estimate of €1.7 billion, and over €1.25 billion more than the €983 million approved by the Twenty-Six County government in 2017. This figure is sure to rise before the final completion of the project.
Many health projects have undoubtedly been impacted by this cost over-run - a result of gross incompetence by successive Health Ministers, including Harris, in relation to major infrastructural projects and public monies.
Simon Harris putting on a show for the Fine Gael faithful in Athlone last Sunday.
The hagiography of Simon Harris
Even before Harris was formerly elected Fine Gael leader, journalists and media outlets in the Twenty-Six Counties went into overdrive in their praise of Harris, with the Wicklow TD being christened the ‘TikTok Taoiseach’ by some of the more cringier elements of the media due to Harris’ use of the social media app.
RTÉ in particular went into overdrive in their hagiography of Harris, with multiple stories being posted by the national broadcaster charting Harris’ rise from lowly Wicklow County Councillor to leader of Fine Gael and Taoiseach in waiting.
But RTÉ was not alone in this beatification of the Greystones native, with the Irish Independent, the Irish Examiner, and the Journal.ie also churning out a huge amount of content chock full of epithets praising Harris and his record in government, with any critique of his decade long tenure as a government minister being shared through gritted teeth.
This praise of Harris was sung alongside condemnations of those seen as not tipping the cap enough to outgoing Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, with several journalists attacking opposition political parties and leaders for ‘declining to put politics aside' and by ‘barely articulating a proper farewell to the departing Taoiseach.’
A recent hagiographical analysis of Simon Harris by the Journal.ie.
Rather than heralding a new dawn for the people of this state, Harris is just more of the same. Establishment political parties like his exist solely to maintain the illusion of democracy whilst simultaneously colluding with the likes of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party to protect and advance the interests of multinationals, banks, landlords, foreign governments and other powerful anti-democratic forces.
The private bank bailout, NAMA, the imposition of austerity, the vulture takeover of Irish housing, and the privatisation of natural resources and public services are just the latest examples of the system working exactly as it was designed to do.
Éirígí offers a real alternative to these establishment parties and the failures of the past. We have no loyalty to a state or socio-economic system that perpetuates poverty, inequality, injustice and division in our society. Our only loyalty is to the people of Ireland and the New Republic that we aim to help build.
You can read about our vision for the New Republic in the landmark republican document A Democratic Programme For The New Republic.