If you were paying attention over the past few weeks to the Gordon and Denton by-election in the United Kingdom, you might have come across a strange sight: Dublin City Councillor Hazel Chu, at a Green Party event in Manchester, chanting “refugees are welcome here” alongside members of Manchester’s Muslim Community.
There is something incongruous about this at the best of times. Hazel Chu is not from Manchester, and has no connection to the city. For her to be standing in the middle of that city as a guest, pronouncing on who is and is not welcome in somebody else’s house, is objectively bizarre behaviour. The Irish media would uniformly take grave exception to, say, Nigel Farage coming to Dublin to pronounce on Irish immigration policy – but Chu’s expedition to the blue half of Manchester went almost entirely unremarked upon. This should be shocking, but then if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know it’s anything but shocking. The whole thing was ignored.
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