Immigration crisis is teaching the Irish how it feels to be an English conservative | World | News

When the Irish began voicing their anger at migration levels in their country, I naively thought it might be a good development in the wider conversation about who nations admit and in what numbers. The often-used pejorative of “racist” surely couldn’t be slapped on the Irish in the way it had the English. Surely Ireland, which suffered Elizabeth I’s dispossession of Roman Catholics, and other horrors too innumerable to mention here, couldn’t be seen as punching down?

Surely Ireland, which had fought so hard for its native culture, thrown off the British Empire (well, almost) wouldn’t see its people demonised for wanting to preserve a culture that had been choked for centuries? My hope, as an Englishman with Irish heritage, was that liberals would pause when they heard anti-immigration rhetoric and ask themselves if it was really fair that Ireland’s population was expected to put up with yet more foreign interference.

The Liberal-Left couldn’t say, for example, that the Irish should take people in because they colonised swathes of the planet. It couldn’t accuse Ireland of starting wars that resulted in refugee crises and use that as an excuse to shut up ordinary people who have nothing to do with such decisions.

What the Liberal-Left could do, it turns out, is not think about any of this, and simply brand those who want Ireland to be Irish as racists.

The latest manifestation of this dismissive, cruel and metropolitan prejudice comes in the form of a furore centred on a TikToker named Garron Noone from Mayo.

Noone is a musician and comedian and the only reason I know of his existence is because he makes some of the funniest videos I’ve yet seen on social media.

They often revolve around slagging off the English, but his stated reason for the ridicule — such as the Irish beating the English at tea-drinking — are so petty that his passionate delivery is guaranteed to make me laugh. Before today I’d say that there is nothing about his content to which anyone could object.

But Noone made the mistake of saying something very measured about immigration. Addressing Conor McGregor’s St Patrick’s Day visit to the White House, and his remarks on immigration, Noone said: “My opinion on Conor McGregor is irrelevant. I don’t think he’s a good person, and I don’t think it’s particularly hard to find evidence of that — but it doesn’t surprise me in the least to see a lot of people agreeing with what he was saying.

“There absolutely is an immigration issue in Ireland. That doesn’t mean that people feel like we shouldn’t take the refugees that we’re able to take. It doesn’t mean that people feel like people shouldn’t be able to come here for better opportunities.

“The systems that we have in place are being taken advantage of, and that is plain to see, and the government continually does not allow people to express their concerns about that.”

He added: “Our towns and especially our cities are becoming much less safe. Now that’s not just because of immigration, there’s a lot of factors to that, but if you can’t see that that’s happening, then you have not left your house.

“Communities all over Ireland are concerned, and their concerns are continuously not being heard. And when you continuously suppress what people are feeling, you turn them towards more extreme beliefs.”

He even pre-empted people miscontruing his remarks, dismissing any such developments as “the internet for you”.

Today, Noone’s social media accounts on TikTok and Instagram appear to have been deleted and reports suggest that he did so after a backlash that amounts to bullying.

He’s the second Irishman in four days to suffer sneering opprobrium for daring to talk about immigration. McGregor earned the wrath of Ireland’s self-destructive, unthinking, Europhile elite for telling reporters in Washington DC: “Ireland is on the cusp of losing its Irishness.”

Alarmist? Possibly. Time will tell. But if you’re in any doubt as to whether this is a racist thing to say, just run a very simple experiment in your head: pretend that McGregor was talking about an Asian or African country. Then ask yourself: what is the difference?

Ask yourself what our English elites, so horrified by anti-immigration rhetoric, think of somewhere like Benidorm. They hate the place. Why? Because they view it as an unofficial English colony in which Spanish culture is disrespected and drowned out by tourists getting apocalyptically drunk.

It’s also worth asking why the Irish battle against British rule isn’t now cast as some form of bigotry by the Left. It’s not only because the British state, with its vast empire, was more powerful than underdog Ireland.

It’s because it’s very easy, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, to see why a nation wouldn’t want its culture watered down and its sovereignty compromised.

Which makes it all the more ironic that the fate of Ireland seems to have been to escape one empire only to bind itself to the European Union, with all of its horrific political correctness and hatred of democracy.

Some Irish are now learning what it feels like to be an English conservative. And they have my sympathy and support. Because it’s not fun.