Daniel Hannan

Daniel Hannan MEP
Member of the European Parliament for South East England
Incumbent
Assumed office 14 July 1999
Personal details
Born	(1971-09-01) 1 September 1971 Lima, Peru
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Alma mater	Marlborough College Oriel College, Oxford
Website	www.hannan.co.uk
(The picture above is courtesy of the Mises Youth Club)

Daniel John Hannan (born 1 September 1971) is a British politician and Member of the European Parliament, representing South East England for the Conservative Party.

In the Parliament, he previously sat with the Non-Inscrits, having been expelled from the European People's Party–European Democrats group in 2008. Recently the Conservatives and other anti-federalist parties formed a new eurosceptic group, with which he now sits. Hannan is a eurosceptic and is strongly critical of European integration. He currently serves on the Committee on Fisheries and the Delegation for Relations with Afghanistan.

Hannan is also a journalist, writing leaders and a blog for the The Daily Telegraph. He has also published several books arguing for radical democratic reform.

[does this incident belong in the lede...it is just a remark made in August that is about expected for a conservative] Hannan made national news headlines in August 2009 by criticising the National Health Service on the Fox News Channel in the United States. Amongst other comments, Hannan stated on US TV that he "wouldn't wish" the NHS "on anyone". The comments sparked criticism and controversy from some [WHICH? Don't be wimpy with vagueness]quarters in the UK.

Early life

Hannan was born of Anglo-Irish parents living on their farm near Lima, Peru (the centre of one of Peru's largest and most modern poultry businesses; the family estate also included a cotton plantation in Santa Cruz, Bolivia). After spending his childhood in Peru, he was educated at Marlborough College and Oriel College, Oxford, where he studied Modern History. He speaks French and Spanish.

Early political career

Daniel was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1992, also serving as national vice-chairman of Conservative Students from 1992-3, and then chairman of Conservative Graduates from 1994. He had earlier established the Oxford Campaign for an Independent Britain, and on 12 September 1992 led a members' protest at a European financial summit held in Bath, which was widely televised and, he has since light-heartedly claimed, led to the withdrawal of the Pound Sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism a few days later. Through the CIB he became involved with the Bruges Group, and after he graduated he became, in 1994, director of a Eurosceptic political think-tank, the European Research Group. In 1996 he was hired by the Daily Telegraph as a leader-writer, and has since contributed to The Spectator and many other newspapers and magazines around the world. In 1997 he became an adviser and speechwriter to Michael Howard, then Shadow Foreign Secretary, and in 1998 he was given a place on the Conservative candidates' list for the following year's European Parliament election. He later became a speechwriter for party leader William Hague. In 1999 he stood down from his posts at the European Research Group and Conservative Graduates.

Member of the European Parliament

Daniel Hannan was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999, and was re-elected at the top of his party's list for the South East England constituency in 2004. In April 2008, Daniel Hannan was elected to the top position of the Conservative list for the 2009 European elections in the constituency of South East England, and in June 2009 he was re-elected to the European Parliament.

A year after his first election, Hannan courted controversy when he appeared to be using the Conservative Party's central office as headquarters for a campaign to persuade Danish voters to block the introduction of the European Single Currency- however, he was able to show that the campaign was actually being run from his Westminster flat.

Opposition to the ICTY

Hannan has campaigned in the European Parliament for an end to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, describing it as "a disgusting travesty," and has praised the work of John Laughland, a supporter of Slobodan Milošević who "chronicles, in pitiless detail, how the judges crashed through a series of legal norms and conventions in their increasingly frantic attempts to secure a conviction", though Hannan has taken what he claims to be "the more conventional view that Milosevic was a calculating Commie who unleashed a series of calamities". Hannan claimed in 2007 a system where international law was used to regulate domestic matters would "create the opportunity for a dictatorship far worse than Milosevic's", because the courts could try democratic leaders, even though they themselves had no democratic mandate.

Campaign against the Lisbon Treaty

He opposed ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in the European Parliament, and was one of several MEPs who took part in a demonstration in the chamber after Parliament voted to endorse the Treaty. He has continued to speak against the Treaty, and in the manner of Cato the Elder's famous call, Carthago delenda est, he ended every speech, whatever its subject, with a call for the Lisbon Treaty to be put to a referendum: "Pactio Olisipiensis censenda est".

Expulsion from the EPP-ED

Attempts by several MEPs to disrupt the work of the Parliament caused sufficient annoyance for a majority of Members to endorse a rule change giving the Speaker/President the discretion to limit the use of filibustering procedures where he "is convinced that these are manifestly intended to cause, and will result in, a prolonged and serious obstruction of the procedures of the House or the rights of other Members" (Rule 20, para 1). In the parliamentary session just before the new rule was to be presented by the President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering, Hannan criticised what he termed a deviation from the rule of law. He continued speaking after his allocated time had ended by quoting Edmund Burke, but was interrupted mid-quote and had his microphone cut off by Luigi Cocilovo, one of the 14 Vice-Presidents. He then responded by damning, without vocal amplification, what he claimed were Parliament’s deviations from its own rules;

An absolute majority is not the same as the rule of law. I accept that there is a minority in this house in favour of a referendum. That there is a minority in this house against the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. But this house must nonetheless follow its own rulebooks. And by popular acclamation to discard the rules under which we operate is indeed an act of arbitrary and despotic rule. It is only my regard for you Mr. Chairman and my personal affection for you that prevents me from likening it to the Ermächtigungsgesetz of 1933 which was also voted through by a parliamentary majority.

Pöttering is a German national and a member of the same political group (EPP-ED) as Hannan. Hannan's remarks caused outrage amongst other MEPs, from his own country and party, with Christopher Beazley MEP, angrily telling him to "come outside...you can’t say that". The head of EPP-ED, Joseph Daul, responded by initiating proceedings to expel Hannan immediately from their Group. Daniel Hannan left the EPP-ED on 19 February 2008. He sat, for the remainder of the five-year term as a Conservative without pan-European affiliation (Non-Inscrit). Following his 2009 re-election, he sits with the new eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists along with his Conservative Party colleagues.

YouTube hit

On 24 March 2009, after Gordon Brown had given a short speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in advance of the G20 London summit, Hannan followed up by delivering a 3-minute speech criticising in very strong terms the response by Gordon Brown to the global financial crisis. He finished the speech:

You cannot spend your way out of a recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others', that we are well placed to weather the storm, I have to tell you, you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it's nonsense. Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so. The European Commission has said so. The markets have said so, which is why our currency has devalued by thirty percent. And soon, the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.

The final phrase, "the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government", was a quote from a speech by Labour Party leader John Smith criticising then-Prime Minister John Major in 1992.

A video clip of the speech went viral on YouTube that evening, attracting more than 630,000 views in 24 hours. It became the 'most viewed today' YouTube video worldwide two consecutive days. Hannan was invited to appear on several shows on American cable news channels, including Fox News and MSNBC: he appeared on television program Hannity via video link at 9pm EST on the same day, and on the Glenn Beck Program the following day. He also appeared on Your World with Neil Cavuto, where he stated he would have voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 presidential election had he been an American citizen. The main British television channels, particularly the BBC and ITV, gave the speech fairly limited coverage, for which they faced some criticism from Conservative MPs and "a handful of viewers"; Conservative MP Nigel Evans stated that their lack of coverage rendered YouTube the 'ultimate in public service broadcasting'. As of September 2009, there have been 2.5 million views of the clip.

Praise for Iceland's economic miracle

Hannan has been a regular visitor to Iceland for 15 years. His best man organised his stag night there to celebrate its refusal to join the European Union, and has declared Icelanders to be the sturdiest and most self-reliant people he knows. Hannan's critics have pointed to his extravagant praise for Iceland's economic miracle prior to the 2008 crash, in which he advocated that other countries should emulate the Icelandic model of minimal national and international regulation as their model. In an October 2004 piece for The Spectator, entitled Blue-Eyed Sheikhs, Hannan wrote "For 70 years the Althing has been dominated by the splendidly named Independence Party, which has pursued the kind of Thatcherite agenda that is off limits to EU members ... Icelanders have no more desire to submit to international than to national regulation. That attitude has made them the happiest, freest and wealthiest people on earth. Long may they remain so".

Hannan has responded to Iceland's crisis by writing that the country "would be mad to join the EU"; if they'd adopted the euro, their currency would have been unable to fall to cushion the blow. He continues to praise "the enterprise of your people. You understand that independence is the natural condition of a free-standing citizenry." Iceland formally applied to join the EU in July 2009 after a narrow vote in the Icelandic parliament. On his blog Hannan reacted to the news of the Icelandic EU application by reclaiming that Iceland would never join the EU and pointing out that so far it had only "voted to start discussing terms, not to accept them". After all the issue would at the end be decided by the people in a referendum and they would never accept membership. Days later an opinion poll was published in Iceland showing a plurality of Icelanders, or 48.5 percent, opposed to joining the EU and 34.7 percent in favour.

NHS criticism

In April 2009 he criticised supporters of the National Health Service, saying that those who claimed it was the greatest British invention were clearly forgetting about parliamentary democracy, penicillin, the discovery of DNA, the abolition of slavery, or common law. He also argued that the NHS has left Britain with low survival rates for cancers, strokes, high chances of becoming more ill in hospital, and constant waiting lists. David Cameron, who had said that his priorities were "three letters: NHS", distanced himself from Hannan's remarks, saying that Hannan has "some rather eccentric points of view".

Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Hannan said of the media storm around his comments: On a visit to the US, I was asked by an interviewer whether I would recommend a British-style health-care model, paid for out of general taxation. I replied that all three parties were devoted to the NHS, and that it had public support (although I added that this was at least partly the result of the inaccurate belief that free health care for the poor is a unique attribute of the British system). But I didn't want to dissemble: I have for years argued that Britain would be better off with a Singapore-style system of personal health-care accounts. So I cautioned against nationalisation, citing international league tables on survival rates and waiting times.

Also making the wider point that: "we seem to have lost the notion that a backbencher speaks for himself. I like David Cameron, and want him to be Prime Minister, not least so that Britain stops racking up debt. But the idea that I therefore agree with him on every issue is, when you think about it, silly."

Electoral reform

Hannan argues in his writings and in the media (for example, during an appearance on Question Time on BBC television on 28 May 2009) for ballot initiatives (whereby electors can directly enact legislation as happens in California), a power of recall (whereby a sitting Member of Parliament can be forced to submit to re-election if enough of his local electorate support this), fixed term parliaments, local and national referendums, open primaries and the abolition of party lists.

Enoch Powell

It was reported in August 2009 that Hannan had praised the anti-immigrant Conservative politician Enoch Powell as "somebody who understood the importance of national democracy, who understood why you need to live in an independent country and what that meant, as well as being a free marketeer and a small-government Conservative."

However, he is also on record as saying "For what it’s worth, I think Enoch Powell was wrong on immigration. The civil unrest that he forecast, and that many feared in 1968, didn’t materialise. Britain assimilated a large population with an ease that few countries have matched. Being an immigrant myself, I have particular cause to be grateful for Britain’s understated cosmopolitanism."

The Times' associate editor Daniel Finkelstein said that "many immigrant families would find Dan's endorsement of Powell threatening and unpleasant, even though I am sure that was not his intent."

Writing in on The Telegraph website, Mr Hannan said: "I’m surprised that no one has picked up on the thing that I most admire about Enoch Powell, namely his tendency to ignore conventional wisdom and think things through from first principles. Like Rowan Williams, he always did his hearers the courtesy of addressing them as intelligent adults. Both men regularly got into trouble in consequence, either because they were genuinely misunderstood or because their detractors affected to misunderstand them. Neither responded by dumbing down. That, in politics, takes a special kind of integrity."

Publications

Daniel Hannan has been a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph since 1996. He has also written for various other newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the German daily Die Welt, the Swiss weekly Weltwoche, The Sunday Telegraph, The Catholic Herald, Freedom Today, the Brussels Journal and The Spectator.

He is the author of Time for a Fresh Start in Europe (1993) A Guide to the Amsterdam Treaty (1997), The Euro: Bad for Business (1998), The Challenge of the East (1999), What if Britain Votes No? (2002) and The Case for EFTA (2004), and contributed to Treason at Maastricht (1994), by Rodney Atkinson and Norris McWhirter.

He was the co-founder of Direct Democracy and co-author, along with 27 Conservative MPs elected in 2005, of Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party, which proposes the wholesale devolution of power and the direct election of decision-makers. These ideas were developed further in a series of six pamphlets, The Localist Papers, serialised in The Daily Telegraph in 2007. In 2008, he published the book The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain together with Douglas Carswell.

External links

• Daniel Hannan's Blog
• Profile at European Parliament website
• Video of his attack on Gordon Brown