Belfast serves as a wake-up call but political elites now risk losing the faith of the nation

Rioting should, obviously, be condemned. So too, obviously, should attempted murder.

Yet, when the latter happens on the streets of the United Kingdom and the public believes it is a direct consequence of the failed immigration policies of successive Governments over many decades, is it any wonder the public feels the need to vent their anger?

Yes, Northern Ireland is different. North Belfast is a place I know well. I grew up there.

And I spent time there when I was Minister of State for Northern Ireland.

As a Catholic who supported the Union, I spent time with both communities.

I heard the grievances of both. I learned a term not widely known when there were disturbances.

"Recreational rioting". This meant youngsters, often stirred up by professional agitators, operating in the shadows.

While the murals supporting Palestine on the Falls Road and those supporting Israel on the Shankill graphically express the ongoing community tensions that exist in a society still scarred by the years of the Troubles, this violence feels different.

People watching in the rest of the UK will understand it. They will share the anger at what happened.

Some of the questions they are asking are the ones that should be asked.

What was a foreign national who had passed through France and Ireland doing claiming asylum in the UK?

Is France unsafe? Is Ireland? Why on earth was he our responsibility? Why was he allowed to stay?

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This incident gives focus and voice to a population who have had enough.

They were promised secure borders and lower immigration but have been forced to watch an open borders crisis.

They see people with no connection to our nation and who have made no contribution get looked after, housed and fed.

They are fed up with hearing "multiculturalism" lauded. They are happy to live in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith, multi-sexuality society but just want the values we cherish respected and the law applied in a way that is colour- and faith-blind and fair to all.

They keep being told there is something racist in questioning how this was allowed to happen and being labelled "far-right" for wanting to bring it to an end.

They don’t understand why so many who clearly hold our values of freedom, equality before the law, religious openness and freedom of speech in contempt are pandered to.

They look at the streets of their capital city fill with people who support violence and extremism week after week in the name of distortions of the Muslim faith and see the police stand by.

Every single time these things happen, almost all politicians gaslight the public.

Remember when my Conservative colleague, David Amess, was stabbed to death by an Islamist extremist and Parliament gathered to opine in consensus about being polite on Twitter?

And now we see an alleged attempted murder on the streets of Belfast spark conversations about calmness.

The political establishment better wake up to the anger of the public and act.

Otherwise, they risk losing control of a population that is losing faith in them.

I hope – but can’t say I believe – that Belfast will, at last, be the wake-up call.