Simon On Substack: Will the Tánaiste’s Dog whistling Bury Right-Wing Populism?

Asylum: The Centre Strikes Back

If centrist and centre-right promises to hem in mass migration had ever carried real policy weight, London would today remain overwhelmingly native-born thanks to Tory and New Labour promises. Readers should assess Tánaiste Simon Harris’s Substack debut in this light. Rhetorically striking, even shocking by recent Irish standards, yet familiar in substance as centre-right parties have pledged around the Western World.

The central weakness of the piece is its sheer amnesia.

Housing shortages, service bottlenecks, and administrative overload did not arise spontaneously; they are the cumulative result of state decisions taken over decades by Harris and friends.

If this new resolve by the government is real (spoiler: it’s not), it won’t be proven on Substack. It will be proven in law. 

The first flashpoint will be the asylum legislation promised by Jim O’Callaghan. That bill will answer a simple question people already understand instinctively: will the system finally move at speed, enforce decisions, and distinguish clearly between protection and economic migration or will it once again prioritise process over outcomes while communities absorb the consequences?

The next two tripwires for Jim and Simon will be implementation of the terms of the EU migration pact, the transfer of the asylum burden from IPAS accommodation to megacentres, never mind the fancy political footwork required to hammer out an all-island asylum deal with the Brits.

Then there is the not entirely unimportant question of legal migration, specifically through language school reform and tweaks to the visa mill industry as promised by FF’s Lawless.

This publication holds its breath for these reforms, even if a substantial chunk of voters will be placated by rhetoric alone on the matter.

That is the risk for the centre. By reclaiming the language of limits, it has raised expectations it can no longer deflect. The next two years will decide whether this new realism marks a genuine shift in how the State governs migration, or simply a more careful way of managing dissent while outcomes continue much as before.

Irish people are patient, but they are not stupid. This time, the tests are coming fast, and there will be nowhere left to hide.

What About the “Irish Foir Right”

This Substack alone should tell Irish nationalists something important: the vacuum phase is over. Migration is no longer a “forbidden topic” waiting to be seized by insurgents. It is being pulled firmly back into institutional control.

Whatever its real intent, the Substack matters less for what it promises than for what it signals: the centre has decided to occupy the ground the Irish right assumed would remain open to it.

Second, the language Harris uses is revealingly European. Capacity, constraints, sustainability, public services, and social cohesion etc etc etc. This is not American culture-war grammar. There is no moral absolutism, no identity theatre, no emotive scapegoating. Instead, migration is treated as a systems-management problem inside a finite polity.

For the Irish right, this should be read as a warning. For years, it relied on the belief that silence, taboo, and progressive moralism would eventually force a rupture it could exploit. That moment has passed. 

The deeper problem is that much of the Irish right is not actually rooted in Irish political life. It remains culturally Americanised, mimicking U.S. talking points, aesthetics, and outrage cycles that simply do not land here.

The quiet truth is that the Irish right failed to turn the energy of East Wall into anything durable. What should have been a moment of consolidation dissolved instead into personality clashes, and a scatter of micro-parties. Too many self-appointed leaders mistook online attention for authority and electoral success and will continue to do so until they hit oblivion.

What this Substack makes clear is that the migration wars are not ending, just that the easy evasions are gone.

First, the Irish right needs to accept that the protest phase is over. The system is no longer ignoring the issue; it is absorbing it. That changes everything.

The centre has adjusted just enough to drain that energy. From here on, influence will go to those who can show seriousness, patience, and an ability to operate inside reality rather than against it.