Is that your man Eddie Hobbs I see in the news again?
It is. Hobbs, formerly Ireland’s best known financial adviser from the prelapsarian days before the financial crisis, was in the news last weekend when he hosted a two-day conference in Co Meath attended by hundreds of people, each paying €90 for the privilege.
All value for money stuff, I suppose, and investment advice? How to make your money work harder, that kind of thing?
Eh, no. Hobbs has reinvented himself in recent years as a podcaster and he campaigns on a variety of topics and issues. He was a vaccine-sceptic during Covid and is a fierce critic of the “political establishment” and what he sees as its supporters in the “mainstream media”.
Other targets include climate change, the global banking industry, gender ideology, attempts to limit free speech and immigration. He suggests that the Irish Government, at the behest of shadowy international forces, is seeking to replace the native Irish population with foreigners.
Janey, that’s quite a departure from encouraging people to buy apartments in Cape Verde.
The value of your investment can go down as well as up, as they say.
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So what was the conference about?
Hobbs presented it as an attempt to find “solutions” to Ireland’s problems, telling delegates at the first session that they had all heard enough about the problems – he wanted to hear about solutions. For many of the speakers, the principal problem was immigration – as in, there is too much of it. So the solution is to reduce it, or stop it altogether.
[ Eddie Hobbs: From consumer advice to conspiracy theoriesOpens in new window ]
Though some speakers acknowledged that some immigration was needed, others took a harder line: “We need to close the borders!” said Jana Lunden, a podcaster (of course) and campaigner. Several speakers were very worried that Irish people would become a minority in their own country.
All sounds a bit ... Trumpy?
Funny you should say that. There was a lot of admiration for Donald Trump (“God bless him!” prayed one speaker) and Hobbs himself suggested that they needed to reach out to the Irish diaspora in the US who support Trump. Hobbs has appeared several times on the War Room podcast of Steve Bannon, an early adviser and inspiration to Trump, and still hugely influential in Maga circles.
And is Maga interested in making Ireland great again?
Bannon is. He recently told an interviewer that he is “spending a tonne of time behind the scenes on the Irish situation to help form an Irish national party. They’re going to have an Irish Maga, and we’re going to have an Irish Trump.”
But who will be this Irish Trump?
Not Eddie. “I’ve zero intention to get involved in Irish politics right or left,” he said last week.
