Tea Party, inspirateur d’une Five O’Clock Revolution ?

Tea Party, inspirateur d’une Five O’Clock Revolution ?

Il est vrai qu’entre les deux, – USA et UK, – l’Angleterre est certainement la plus traditionnellement concernée, étant le pays du thé, disons au moins du Five O’Clock Tea… Et puis, Tea Party, c’est d’abord une affaire (en 1773, à Boston, la Boston Tea Party) entre l’Angleterre et sa colonie américaine devenue récalcitrante. Par conséquent, qui s’étonnera que certains découvrent l’idée que le succès électoral et de communication de Tea Party, version postmoderniste et made in USA, pourrait donner, donne déjà des idées aux Britanniques ?

Un article de The Independent du 10 novembre 2010 aborde le sujet qui a déjà été évoqué à la suite de contacts préliminaires entre l’extrême droite anglaise et Sarah Palin.

«Tea, the poet William Cowper observed, is “the cup that cheers”. Unless you're an American, in which case it's a symbol of oppression worth hurling into the Atlantic. In Britain, tea parties are occasions associated not with revolution but with the aroma of Earl Grey, the gentle clink of china and mad hatters.

»The talk on the British right wing yesterday was of the stirring of a new popular alliance inspired by the grassroots right-wing Tea Party movement that has swept America.

»Tea Party candidates will stand in the next election in Britain – so predicts Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun – and the shock jock Jon Gaunt has announced his entry into politics at the head of an EU referendum campaign.

»In Britain, as in the US, a grassroots constituency feels ignored by mainstream politics and is intolerant of big government. Its members share a desire for lower rates of taxation, although in the UK campaigners' ire is directed as much at perceived over-interference by the European Union as at the dominance of the British state. Libertarian views do not generally extend to a belief in the benefits of immigration.

»Similarities are drawn between the American movement – whose symbolic leader is Sarah Palin – and the emerging network of libertarian and protest groups on the British right, ranging from the TaxPayers' Alliance and Young Britons' Foundation to the Release Britain from Brussels group.

»Brits jumping on the bandwagon include the death-defying Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, which polled almost a million votes in the general election, the hard-boiled Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, and the commentator Richard Littlejohn, who sees the Tea Party's constituents as “small business owners, lawyers, housewives”.

»“It's no longer about party politics and left and right,” declared Gaunt. “There's a lot of disaffected people out there. On Question Time I'm the one who gets the most cheers because I'm independent of any party.” Gaunt, who was sacked by the radio network TalkSport for calling a local councillor a Nazi, said the broadcasting sector was also failing to reach a disenfranchised group. “Radio stations are conservative and many people are scared of me, which is a shame. There's no one in Britain that can get people reacting the way I do.”»

dedefensa.org