BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - OCTOBER 28: Artist Ciaran Gallagher puts the finishing touches to his updated mural which has been detailing the Conservative party leadership contest on October 28, 2022 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The mural had earlier shown Liz Truss, whose brief tenure as prime minister ended earlier this week, victorious in the Conservative leadership race over Rishi Sunak. Mr Sunak was sworn in as prime minister on Tuesday. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
William se prélasse sur un banc devant l’hôtel de ville de Newtownards. C’est un homme élancé dans la soixantaine avec un accent campagnard roulant. Je lui dis que je suis à la recherches des conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord. Il rit, secoue la tête. Savait-il que des conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord se présentent à ce siège ? Son rire s’intensifie. « Je doute qu’ils le sachent eux-mêmes. »
Se présenter comme un conservateur en Irlande du Nord, c’est comme monter un cheval vieillissant pour le Grand National. Cela demande du cran. Le mot ‘Conservateur’ (« Tory » en anglais) a ses origines dans la langue irlandaise (probablement de toiraidh, signifiant ‘hors-la-loi’), mais c’est à peu près la seule connexion du Parti conservateur avec l’endroit aujourd’hui. Le conservateur d’Irlande du Nord est le représentant local d’une masse bleue indifférente, loin de l’autre côté de la mer. Les visites occasionnelles de Londres ne se passent généralement pas bien, comme l’a découvert Rishi Sunak dans le quartier Titanic de Belfast le mois dernier, quand ce qui aurait dû être une simple conférence de presse est devenu un fiasco chargé de symboles funestes alors qu’on lui demandait si son parti pouvait être comparé à un navire en train de couler.
Les conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord se décrivent comme ‘l’alternative positive de centre-droit et pro-union à la politique paroissiale qui a flétri l’Irlande du Nord’. En 2019, ils ont remporté une part de vote de 0,7 %. Ce n’est pas difficile de comprendre pourquoi. Les unionistes ici peuvent voter pour le DUP ou le TUV, des partis bien plus engagés envers l’union et bien plus conservateurs que les Tories ne le seront jamais, tandis que les électeurs désirant un unionisme moins rigide peuvent opter pour l’UUP. Naturellement, tous ces partis ont une représentation importante au gouvernement local et à l’Assemblée d’Irlande du Nord, ce que les conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord ne peuvent revendiquer. Demandez aux gens ici pourquoi les conservateurs présentent des candidats en Irlande du Nord et ils hausseront les épaules — le Parti conservateur et unioniste doit être vu comme présentant des candidats dans les quatre nations du Royaume-Uni, donc ils le font et ils encaissent leurs pertes. C’est tout.
Pourtant, j’étais intrigué par ces conservateurs excentriques, si loin des comtés. Quel genre de personne se présenterait pour les conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord ? Cela va tellement à l’encontre du courant que c’est presque punk. Ces personnes devraient être courageuses, avoir une certaine audace. J’avais espéré parler aux candidats de la campagne, mais je n’ai reçu aucune réponse à mes demandes d’entretien. La diffusion politique du parti n’a pas été utile, juste une analyse laborieuse des coûts du manifeste travailliste. Il n’y avait pas beaucoup d’informations en ligne non plus : un site web mince, un petit groupe Facebook et un compte X suspendu depuis des semaines maintenant. Alors je suis allé à Newtownards, à 10 miles à l’est de Belfast, pour parler aux électeurs comme William. Si je ne pouvais pas avoir une vue d’ensemble de la campagne des conservateurs en Irlande du Nord, j’explorerais le terrain à la place.
Newtownards aurait dû être un bon endroit pour commencer ma chasse. C’est la plus grande ville de la circonscription de Strangford et a une forte base unioniste. Le candidat conservateur est Barry Hetherington, un homme de Fermanagh qui est le vice-président des conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord. Il a peu de chances de remporter plus qu’une poignée de votes ici. Mais les Tories ont aussi peu de chances de remporter plus qu’une poignée de votes n’importe où en Irlande du Nord. Après s’être donné la peine de se présenter, autant faire campagne. Et pourtant, il n’y a aucune preuve de cette campagne.
Les autres partis — DUP, TUV, Alliance — ont orné les lampadaires de posters. Les conservateurs n’ont pas pris la peine ; il semble que leur jeu de démarchage électoral ne soit pas non plus à la hauteur. À moins de trois semaines des élections, les habitants de Newtownards semblent ignorer qu’un conservateur se présente. Je demande à Kathleen, la soixantaine, si elle sait que voter conservateur est une option. « Non, je ne m’en étais pas rendu compte. Nous sommes généralement assez bien informés. Et les élections sont bientôt, n’est-ce pas ? Nous avons reçu nos bulletins [de vote] par la poste hier. »
La réaction la plus courante à mes questions est un amusement las. Tout le monde affiche la même expression. Les lèvres se serrent, les nez se plissent, les yeux brillent. Lorsque je demande à Hazel, une femme dans la quarantaine, si elle sait que les Tories se présentent ici, elle sourit. « Je suis sûre qu’ils le font », dit-elle en haussant un sourcil. « Mais je ne m’intéresse pas vraiment aux Tories. » Je me promène dans la rue jusqu’à Déjà Vu Hair, où je rencontre Leah, 18 ans. La candidature de Hetherington est une nouvelle pour elle aussi. Votera-t-elle conservateur? « Non. »
Quelques jours plus tard, j’ai sauté dans un bus pour Downpatrick. Strangford a été un échec, mais peut-être aurais-je plus de chance dans la circonscription adjacente de South Down. C’est un pays magnifique. Les drumlins s’élèvent et tombent, les boreens se faufilent entre des champs étroitement espacés, et les montagnes de Mourne sont teintées indigo à l’horizon. J’aurais pu aller à Newcastle, une belle ville sur la mer d’Irlande, ou à Rostrevor sur le Lough Carlingford. Mais j’ai choisi Downpatrick, avec ses maisons géorgiennes et ses rues vallonnées, pour sa taille relative et son statut de chef-lieu de comté.
South Down est une circonscription du Sinn Féin depuis 2017, et une victoire nationaliste fiable depuis des décennies avant cela. Le conservateur se présentant ici est Hannah Westropp, dont la plutôt timide biographie de candidate laisse entendre qu’elle vit en Irlande du Nord ou qu’elle a été envoyée d’Angleterre.
Downpatrick est un endroit plus petit et plus calme que Newtownards. Les lampadaires annoncent le Sinn Féin et l’Alliance. La plupart des personnes que j’aborde ne veulent pas parler des élections, un résultat qui ne m’étonne pas. La réponse d’un vieil homme sympathique à un arrêt de bus sur St Patrick’s Avenue était typique : « Désolé, ami. Ça ne m’intéresse pas. J’en ai marre. Aucun intérêt du tout. » Finalement, la chance me sourit. Une femme dans Market Street sait qu’un conservateur se présente pour South Down. Je suis intrigué. A-t-elle vu une affiche, reçu un dépliant dans la boîte aux lettres ? « Non, j’ai entendu ça sur Radio Ulster, ils ont passé en revue tous les candidats. » C’était la seule personne au courant d’une campagne conservatrice locale. Sinon, la situation dans South Down n’était pas différente de Strangford : une chasse aux fantômes.
Dans le bus de retour vers Belfast, la pluie battant les fenêtres, j’ai admis ma défaite. Certes, les conservateurs se présentent dans trois autres circonscriptions — East Londonderry, West Tyrone et Newry and Armagh. Peut-être que Coleraine est un foyer d’activisme conservateur. Peut-être que si j’étais allé à Tyrone, j’aurais pu assister à un rassemblement électrisant dans les rues de Strabane, des rosettes bleues scintillant au soleil. Pour tout ce que je sais, les habitants de Newry ne peuvent guère descendre Merchants Quay sans être harcelés par un militant conservateur. Cependant, j’en doute.
Les conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord avancent sur papier seulement. C’est une situation bizarre et facile à ridiculiser. Mais il y a aussi un côté plus sombre à tout cela. L’Irlande du Nord est au bord de l’effondrement. Les récentes coupes recommandées pour le NHS étaient tellement extrêmes que le ministre de la Santé a simplement refusé de les faire. L’infrastructure est en train d’échouer, le nombre de sans-abri est en hausse, et Lough Neagh, autrefois le plus grand lac d’eau douce du Royaume-Uni, est maintenant la plus grande boîte de Petri du monde. En de telles circonstances, un parti qui traite l’Irlande du Nord comme une maison de poupée politique ne fait plus rire.
Si les conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord sont bons pour quelque chose, c’est à servir d’avertissement à leurs propres collègues de l’autre côté de la mer. Sans amis, nettement en infériorité numérique, passant inaperçus d’une élection à l’autre, les conservateurs d’Irlande du Nord pourraient bien offrir un aperçu de l’avenir du parti dans tout le Royaume-Uni. Ce qu’ils vont faire maintenant est un mystère. William l’a dit le mieux, ce jour-là devant l’hôtel de ville de Newtownards : Je doute qu’ils le sachent eux-mêmes.
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SubscribeWhat’s so disheartening about his whole thing is the fact that, no matter how bad it gets, the left simply will not learn. Of course the homeless are going to go where it’s easiest for them. If you don’t prosecute shoplifters because you have some weird idea they deserve what the rob on the grounds that the people they steal from are wealthier than they are, then of course they’ll steal. And nothing that happens seems to shake them out of their stupidity.
The woke religion seems to view “shoplifting” as a form of reparations. Back to the East Coast, NYC actress and politician Cynthia Nixon tweeted how outrageous it is that major US drug stores, vital to the communities they serve–are closing multiple stores and locking up high value items that are frequently stolen–for example, razor blades, nappies, detergent. Kit should be free!
The woke simply have no understanding how the world works: people who see rampant theft know they are being played for being law-abiding, and they are in real danger in an environment of complete and utter lawlessness. And of course daily life is much more inconvenient with things locked up, stores closing, etc. and the price of goods goes up for all–well, all who pay for the goods. No such thing as a free lunch!
This is a bit like those who glorified graffiti in the 70s, when every subway car was covered in graffiti. The woke, before that term existed, celebrated this “street art” and “artists,” while normal people were horrified, terrorized. This is absolutely consistent with their worship of COWs, Citizens of Wakanda, who will lead the woke to the promised land.
Sickening!
Funny story, in middle and rural America, we have not seen a massive crime wave. Our police departments just do the same job they have always done. We know police will not always be there and there are times when they fail or abuse their authority. They are not perfect but they keep chaos at bay and allow society to function.
“You can be mad but I guess I don’t personally view my car as an extension of myself and I’ve never felt violated any of the 15 or so times my car was broken in to.”
“Once a guy accidentally left a cool knife in my car so if it keeps happening you might get a little treat.”
–SETH ROGEN
This is actor and LA resident Seth Rogen’s view on crime. He also said “It’s called living in a big city.”
The extreme left–99.9% of Hollywood, and huge media influencers–is simply unconnected to the reality of daily life in a big city. So my car is broken into for the 16th time–have my PA deal with it, call the insurance company, maybe buy a new car. And Wow…., it’s like so, cool, dude, that some robber dude left a really cool knife in the car…..”
The good news is that this serious, violent crime is starting to hit home in the wealthy neighborhoods. One half or a black power couple was killed in her home by an intruder with an automatic rifle (he went on to commit more crimes, but was stopped when he shot himself in the foot), and a home in a very upscale neighborhood–Pacific Pallisades–suffered a home invason robbery where the guests were held and robbed at gunpoint inside the home during the party.
In San Francisco, a restaurant refused to serve police officers in uniforms because part of their required kit is a gun. The restaurant apparently needed a “safe space,” gun-free. Perhaps they will re-think this if armed intruders come for them. Would they welcome armed police then?
The US is completely out of control–like a dystopian Hollywood film. In NYC during the Golden Age of Crack (late 80s, early 90s), the NYPD institued a policy called “Broken Windows,” which essentially meant zero tolerance for little things. It mostly worked. The radical left has now instituted a policy that might be called “Break the Windows, It’s OK,” and the world can see the results. Burn, baby, burn!
People who call for “law and order,” people who want to be safe in their homes, have their cars unmolested in the street, free to live their lives, are not necessarily “hard right,” nazis, gun-toting vigilantes, or freelance lunatics, they are mostly people of good will who don’t recognize their country any more.
This article could have looped back to De Blasio’s utterly dysfunctional New York City, where an Italian Ph.d. student at Columbia–once one of the world’s premier unis–was stabbed to death and another student wounded by the same criminal. This follows the stabbing death of Tessa Majors in essentially the same place in Dec. 2019.
This must stop. Civil War soon!
Seth Rogan? The guy who gave us Santa Inc?
If any question of listening to actors giving everyone else lessons on life was remaining, just view the Alec Baldwin incident. Not his fault, someone else’s responsibility, he didn’t need to check the gun first, he was told it was cold, so pointing it at someone is fine.
And of course Seth Rogan doesn’t feel that much attachment to his car. He’ll get another one. Probably has more than one anyway. All privileges that 90% of the population do not have.
Yet for some reason, those with the least skin in the game, as it were, are leading the public debate on these ridiculous policies.
Team America World Police nailed this attitude: “It’s our job as actors to read the paper in the morning and then go on TV and talk about it like it’s our opinion.”
Touche! Well said. Yes, the same Seth Rogen, who by the way, said that white supremacists were “review bombing” Santa Inc.
Mediocre actor. World class c@3t!
Please go back to Lock and Load
Unfortunately most of the so called libertarians are pathetic blowhards. Probably the US does ideally need now a period of authoritarian right wing government who would suppress Antifa and violent protests, take control of America-hating, crime supporting ‘mainstream’ media. Etc. It probably won’t get it!
China has already won. A nation that loathes its history and culture, and teaches its children to do this, has a cancer eating itself from the inside. One that considers that appointing ‘trans’ admirals is more important than defending the country, allows vast numbers of people to illegally cross its borders, will not have any will to defend itself in any confrontation.
Are the Chinese doing any of this? No, they are not.
You forgot to say Lock and Load!
Asking Cynthia Nixon and Seth Rogen about social issues is like seeking the opinion of Marie Antoinette on the issues facing the poor before the French Revolution. Of course their wealth so insulates them that they spout the equivalent of “let them eat cake”.
Dr Thomas Sowell, who knows something about growing up poor and black, states that he has given up appearing before congressional committees because he knows that whatever evidence he gives will be disregarded and the politicians will simply enact what they wanted to enact before seeking evidence on the basis of ideology.
You mean seeking the opinion of Marie Antoinette’s poodle.
Possibly a racist remark?
The problem is that they have become so good at what they do. The sophisticated, urbane, and articulate left does propaganda way better than the crass, uneducated, Neanderthal right. They do it so well that they have come to believe it themselves. They have chosen to live in a bright and sunny land of make-believe and illusion. The entire universe is a tabula rasa, where Hollywood movies serve to inform and instruct, and where any inconveniently disruptive vestige of objective reality, any pain which might awaken the woke, can be whisked away on a cloud of pacifying drugs… for now; but there will come a day of reckoning, as there always does.
“Soma” in Brave New World.
As a NYC Republican, though living in the Midwest for 5 decades, it’s easy to be dismissive of the left’s self-inflicted wounds. But I have long-time friends in major cities who are in real danger. Unfortunately, I just don’t see my friends embracing a new Ed Koch. It would be a major repudiation of their expressed values. So the road to safety and sanity will be slow and hard.
A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
Kim Fox, the Cook County (Chicago) State’s Attorney (D, Soros) won reelection in 2020. Her bad deeds weren’t enough to defeat her. She can continue not to prosecute the survivors of gang shootouts because everybody was shooting, so no one’s at fault. Fox chose not to prosecute the Jusse Smollet hoax, until public outcry forced her to do it.
The explanation is identity voting. If you vote your identity, bad governance is irrelevant. It doesn’t change your identity. So you keep voting your identity, even though the government gets worse and worse. If you’re convinced your identity means you vote for Democrats, you continue to vote for Democrats, regardless of how bad they do in governing.
The reason Democrats call all Republicans racist is because it maintains identity voting in minority communities. Democrats wouldn’t have a chance if people voted on the issues, like crime and school choice. So Democrats make sure that minorities think all Republicans are racist, so minorities won’t even consider voting for them. This leads to silly comments like saying Larry Elder, a black conservative running for Governor of California, is the black face of white supremacy. (You can check the LA Times for this whopper.) The need to preserve identity voting leads to Sen. Tim Scott (R, SC) and Lt. Gov. Elect Winsome Sears (R, VA) to be called house negros or tokens, even though their elections show Republicans vote on issues, not skin color.
All according to plan………
“are places with progressive prosecutors working to limit punishments for looters, organised thieves and the unruly, occasionally violent, homeless.”
Soros funded prosecutors most likely, and PostModernist, Neo-Marxist Liberal/Left intelligentsia backed. This is 100% useful Idiots fallowing great Evil in destroying their nation, and them self, in a planned movement – to ultimately allow the Elites to take real control of the West, instead of just their soft control.
It works like this – More Crime = Greater calls from the public to protect them. = More cameras, more monitoring of every thing said and written, more GPS, Spending monitoring, tracking, more spying, more data harvesting and meta-data crunching, facial recognition, bio-metric records, more gait – Syntax AI monitoring…
This is all to cause 1984. And increasing crime causes much to advance that. Surveillance obviously, then division as the predatory class are hated by the prey class, and also the other way – and all are suspicious and angry and scared – and so all become captured as society breaks and democracy is just bought and sold. The capture of the entire education system, the MSM and Social Media – it is far along the track…
I presume the tourist industry in these cities benefits from tourists flying in to loot $1,000 a day of free merchandise, or are only locals allowed to steal? “Come to San Francisco and help yourself” sounds like a good advertising slogan for buses and airlines to run. No need to bring your own tent, just help yourself to one.
I’m embarrassed that I had not considered hopping a flight to San Fran or LA to do my Christmas shopping. If I plan on reselling I think the travel expenses would be tax deductible, right?
More on this from Michael Shellenberger https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-violent-crime-is-rising
The Left has used criminals ever since they released them during the French Revolution to create The Terror of 1791 to 1793. Lenin used criminals to murder opponents post 1917 and they ran the Gulags.
The next step is to put criminals in uniform, such as The Cheka, to undertake officialextermination of the opposition.
Wakanda does not exist. Its denizens in reality only destroy they don’t create.
Being woke, is a state of mind that requires one to deny that humans need structure and order. One has to deny that there are sociopaths that live among us in order to believe that anarchy is the proper way societies should be structured. The Progressive Left reimagining of crime and punishment doesn’t come from a place of evil. It comes from a good heart, that being poor in and of itself should not be a crime. That the stealing of a loaf of bread is not a crime that deserves punishment. The problem with this is that we are NOT dealing with a Jean Valjean. We are dealing with mental illness, drug addiction, sociopaths. Real criminals who are willing to commit violence. Real criminals who are not capable of living and prospering amongst us. Progressives are living in a state of mind that doesn’t exist. So in the end they create hell for the rest of us to live in.
Trump wins next time.
I assume the wealthy Californians who support all this have private security…
The oddly-named mainstream media — it is far from it — thinks and acts like a cult, particularly the San Francisco Chronicle. It used to be a rather decent newspaper when I worked there.