Any Irish people who hang around Westminster have been hit with the same question many times in recent years from curious British politicos: “What’s the deal with the anti-immigration protests in Ireland?”
Moderates, especially those from the left, often deliver the inquiry with narrowed eyes and a slightly incredulous tone, as if they can’t quite get their heads around the idea that sections of the famously-welcoming Irish populace might object to people coming into the country from outside.
Meanwhile, many from the right wing of British politics – and the more right they are the truer this becomes – usually ask the same question with barely restrained delight.
It is widely acknowledged that many hardcore English nationalists have made common cause with those who inhabit the more nativist-inclined corners of Irish nationalism over the last two years – a prospect that once seemed barmy but is now increasingly common. Both flags, the Union Jack and the Irish Tricolour, are co-opted in parallel as fluttering symbols of the anti-immigration cause.
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So it was little surprise this week to see former mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, a vocal champion of Ireland’s anti-immigration cause, asked about the incarcerated English nationalist known as Tommy Robinson.
McGregor was encouraged to breathe support for Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, into a microphone held by right-wing US commentator Don Keith on Monday at a Washington ball for the then-incoming US president Donald Trump.
Introducing McGregor as a “future president of Ireland ... and patriot”, Keith put it to the Crumlin man that the Republic is “having a problem with immigration, just like America, just like the UK”.
“Yeah,” said McGregor with a grunt, looking barely interested as he scanned the milieu around him.
Robinson, who has agitated against immigrants for years, has been in prison in Britain since October for contempt of court. Keith, meanwhile, lauded him to McGregor as a warrior imprisoned for fighting the scourge of refugees and the “rape of Britain”, presumably a reference to so-called “grooming gangs” of ethnic-Asian child abusers prominent in British news reports ever since Elon Musk started tweeting about the issue recently.
McGregor responded by suggesting that Robinson “deserves to be praised” instead of being “turned on by society”. Whoever is managing the English nationalist’s social media accounts while he is in jail approvingly retweeted the entire exchange. “Thank you Conor,” they said, adding an Irish Tricolour.
The social media posts of Robinson, a former leader of the English Defence League and a notorious anti-immigration provocateur, suggest he has been also obsessed with the issue in Ireland ever since he visited the country in February 2023 to observe bubbling hard right sentiment.
Whoever was in control of his accounts last month tweeted several videos focused on anti-immigration sentiment in a variety of Irish towns, such as Clonmel, of which most English nationalists would have barely heard. In the 18 months before he was locked up, Robinson himself sprayed off hundreds of similar tweets.
English nationalism has rarely been more interested in Ireland. Many observers in London as well as Dublin have scratched their heads at the sight of such green-tinged carry-on from Robinson, one of the most notorious British nativists of recent years, and a man considered to be much too extreme on immigration by Mr Brexit himself, Nigel Farage.
Some were tickled earlier this year to learn that Robinson holds an Irish passport. His mother, Rita Carroll, is Irish. In his 2015 autobiography, Enemy of the State, Robinson wrote that his teenage girlfriend also came from an Irish family. He worked for an Irish builder. He claimed he had friends in the Irish Traveller community while growing up in Luton. He has also suggested that his great-grandfather’s brother was Charles D’Arcy, a 15-year-old who is said to have died fighting the British in the Easter Rising of 1916.
“Ireland loves me and I love Ireland,” Robinson has claimed. One person who definitely does not love him, meanwhile, is Farage. He wants Robinson nowhere near his Reform UK party, which is trying to supplant the Conservatives as the driving force of the British right wing.
Coincidentally, McGregor was also pictured this week in Washington with Farage, a close ally of Trump. “We are so back,” said McGregor, adding the hashtag “#brothers” as he tweeted an image of himself grinning with the most talked about politician in Britain.
Other photographs circulating in the wake of Trump’s inauguration, however, showed McGregor and Farage engaged in what had all the appearance of a heated discussion. One wonders how their conversation might go if they ever got around to discussing Robinson.