If the definition of madness is “doing the same thing a thousand times and expecting a different result” then Daniel Hannan surely qualifies.
Hannan dedicated his life to getting the UK out of the EU – and every prediction he made about Brexit has been proved wrong. Yet he keeps on with the same old arguments and fantasies, perhaps because of his cloistered, very narrow background.
Privately educated (of course), then Oxford (naturally), Hannan became president of the Conservative Association (obviously). From there he slid straight into the back rooms of Euroscepticism, first becoming director of the European Research Group, chairman of the National Association of Conservative Graduates, a leader writer at the Telegraph, adviser and speech writer for Tory leaders, and then an MEP.
Once inside the European Parliament, his main interest was undermining the EU at every step. He had more success than he might ever have dreamt of when he founded Vote Leave, eventually helping to lead it to victory in the Brexit referendum. Finally he was put into the Lords by Boris Johnson.
But despite achieving his life’s ambition in 2016, Hannan is still on the warpath. It seems that Brexit was just not done right. It was betrayed, let down, mismanaged.
Hannan’s vision of Brexit Britain turned out to be totally wrong. We know this because he presented a film for Newsnight on the bright dawn that awaited us outside the EU. That film can still be found on YouTube and captures perfectly the vainglorious stupidity of the Brexit dream.
“Outside the EU the UK is the region’s foremost knowledge-based economy,” Hannan claims. Financial services, fishing, farming, the steel industry, ceramics, cement – freed from EU directives, every single part of the UK economy was set for a re-awakening “outside the EU”. We were going to leave the EU, yet “still participate in the great European common market” while also somehow being “leader of a wider European bloc”.
Hannan asked his viewers to imagine a land in which “family incomes have received a triple boost, food prices are lower outside the Common Agricultural Policy, fuel prices are lower, and taxes are lower because of the independence dividend”.
He was wrong on every count. But his self-confidence has not been dented, and if certain things have not quite worked out as anticipated, then it’s the fault of other people. It is certainly not the case that Hannan has wasted his life on a ridiculous dream, as is made clear in the half page of pro-Brexit bile he writes for the Sunday Telegraph. His article on September 1 was a scorcher.
The headline read: “Britain has the whip hand in negotiations with the EU – it’s a shame our leaders don’t realise it”; which is neither new nor true. But it gets worse, much worse.
For a start, he seems to think that the EU should have allowed the UK to become a low-regulation competitor on its borders. It’s a demonstration of Hannan’s deep naïvety: his complete failure to grasp that the EU would negotiate in its own best interests.
Then, we get the usual claim that the EU is also damaging its own interests in order to “punish the UK”. How it can do that when we hold all the cards is far from clear – but if they gave us what we wanted, “any gains to Britain would be dwarfed by gains to the EU”, Hannan claims. Well, no they obviously wouldn’t.
Hannan then goes on to claim that the Eurocrats are so cheeky they even asked the new Labour government for something in return for mutual recognition of qualifications and relaxed rules for travelling musicians. He judges that the EU can get away with asking for things from the UK because our negotiators have somehow been captured.
“Tragically, some of our own negotiators are so traumatised by Brexit that they see it the same way.” It seems only Hannan can see the truth and could negotiate a better deal, if given the chance. And how might he do that, you ask? At this point, things become sinister.
The EU needs the UK’s defence capabilities more than we need theirs, he says, because we have “the most effective armed forces in Europe”. He then writes this: “If we were to think in purely selfish terms, we would have little interest in defending Europe from Russian revanchism. Obviously, we want to see international law upheld and we want democracy to prevail over tyranny. But bluntly, there is no scenario in which Russian forces will be massed across the Channel threatening us.”
So, there you have it. In Hannan’s devastatingly cynical logic, we have the EU over a barrel, because if they don’t give us what we want we will stand aside and let Russia attack Europe with impunity, knowing that they will be stopped somewhere short of Calais. We hope.
Hannan must know the UK fought two world wars at huge cost to maintain democracy and peace on the continent. But here he is now, not just advocating appeasement, but isolationism, when he should know full well isolationism helps only the Kremlin. And all this is because his life’s work has turned to dust, and he has been revealed as a fool.
No wonder Putin and his regime spent so much money, effort and time encouraging and backing Brexit. No wonder they were amazed to find so many “useful idiots” happy to pursue a policy that was overwhelmingly in Russia’s interest. No wonder they rejoiced at the result and the weakening of European cooperation, unity and power.
But Hannan’s argument is beyond even that despot’s wildest dreams. A member of the UK’s second chamber suggesting that the UK should threaten to stand aside and let Russia run riot, just to teach the EU a lesson? This is not just delusional – it’s dangerous.
