Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy…
State of this:
I mean honestly, where do you even begin? Even by Daniel’s rarefied standards of idiocy, this is a stonker. How is it stupid? Let me count the ways.
1. “Our female head of government” implies the existence of “their female head of government”. Which is odd, because the tweet is clearly aimed at Hillary Clinton, who isn’t anybody’s head of government.
Way to kick someone when they’re down, Dan. What next? “So pleased that my daughter received a wide selection of Christmas presents, unlike those of certain families”?
2. I dunno, I’m no expert, but it’s just possible that there are reasons why so few women make it to the top of politics which don’t have anything to do with how marvellous Britain is.
3. Hillary Clinton was not “the last guy’s wife”. You can tell this, because she was not married to Barack Obama, whose wife is called Michelle. (Honestly, Daniel, I’m surprised you haven’t spotted the memes.)
4. She wasn’t married to the guy before him, come to that. Her husband stopped being president 16 years ago, since when she’s been elected to the Senate twice and served four years as Secretary of State.
5. I’m sure Hillary would love to have been able to run for president without reference to her husband – for the first few years of her marriage, indeed, she continued to call herself Hillary Rodham. But in 1980 Republican Frank White defeated Bill Clinton’s campaign to be re-elected as govenor of Arkansas, in part by mercilessly attacking the fact his wife still used her maiden name.
In the three decades since, Hillary has moved from Hillary Rodham, to Hillary Rodham Clinton, to Hillary Clinton. You can see this as a cynical response to conservative pressure, if you so wish – but let’s not pretend there was no pressure to subsume her political identity into that of her husband, eh? And let’s not forget that it came from your side of the fence, eh, Dan?
6. Also, let’s not forget that the woman you’re subtweeting is a hugely intelligent former senator and secretary of state, who Barack Obama described as the most qualified person ever to run for president. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be so patronising as to imply that the only qualification she had was her husband, now, would you?
7. I’d love to know what qualifications Dan thinks are sufficient to become US president, and whether he believes a real estate mogul with an inherited fortune and a reality TV show has them.
8. Hillary Clinton got nearly 3m more votes than Donald Trump, by the way.
9. More votes than any white man who has ever run for president, in fact.
10. Certainly a lot more votes than Theresa May, who has never faced a general election as prime minister and became leader of the government by default after the only other candidate left in the race dropped out. Under the rules of British politics this is as legitimate a way of becoming PM as any, of course, I’m just not sure how winning a Tory leadership contest by default means she “ran in her own right” in a way that Hillary Clinton did not.
11. Incidentally, here’s a video of Daniel Hannan demanding Gordon Brown call an early election in 2009 on the grounds that “parliament has lost the moral mandate to carry on”.
So perhaps expecting him to understand how the British constitution works is expecting too much.
12. Why the hell is Hannan sniping at Hillary Clinton, who is not US president, when the man who is the new US president has, in three days, come out against press freedom, basic mathematics and objective reality? Sorry, I’m not moving past that.
13. Notice the way the tweet says that our “head of government ” got there on merit. That’s because our “head of state ” got the job because her great, great grandmother happened to be a protestant in 1701 and her uncle wanted to marry a divorcee – all of which makes it a bit difficult to say that our head of government “ran in her own right”. But hey, whatever makes you happy.
14. Is Daniel calling the US a banana republic? I mean, it’s a position I have some sympathy with in this particular week, but it’s an odd fit with the way he gets all hot and bothered whenever someone starts talking about the English-speaking peoples.
15. Incidentally, he stole this tweet from his 14-year-old daughter:
16. Who talks, oddly, like a 45-year-old man.
17. And didn’t even credit her! It’s exactly this sort of thing which stops women making it to the top rank of politics, Daniel.
18. He tweeted that at 6.40am the day after the march. Like, he spent the whole of Saturday trying to come up with a zinger, and then eventually woke up early on the Sunday unable to resist stealing a line from his teenage daughter. One of the great orators of our age, ladies and gentlemen.
19. He thinks he can tweet this stuff without people pointing and laughing at him.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for Labour to find a dividing line with the Tories on Brexit. This week, following the Supreme Court’s ruling that MPs will vote on Article 50, Jeremy Corbyn thought he’d found one.
Along with Tory rebels and other opposition parties, Labour began urging Theresa May to produce a white paper of her Brexit plan for Parliament to scrutinise. This would allow the House to debate her proposals for negotiating Britain’s exit from the EU before voting on triggering Article 50.
“We will be seeking to lay amendments to ensure proper scrutiny and accountability throughout the process,” shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said yesterday. “That starts with a white paper or plan.”
The government equivocated. Brexit Secretary David Davis told the Commons he would introduce a “straightforward” bill, focusing narrowly on Article 50, “within days”. Ministers claimed May’s Lancaster House speech was a thorough enough plan without a white paper.
This set the scene favourably for Corbyn at PMQs today. He could hammer her for shying away from scrutiny. But after a planted question by a Conservative MP asking May for a white paper, she announced that the government will indeed be publishing one:
“We will ensure Parliament has every opportunity to provide that scrutiny. .. I can confirm to the House that our plan will be set out in a white paper.”
This caught Corbyn by surprise, who rather lamely had to improvise his first question, asking when the white paper would come out.
It’s a clever tactic. It stops May from appearing vulnerable to Labour pressure. Publishing the white paper also won’t cause her much grief, considering Labour’s desires for Brexit are pretty similar to hers. Basically, some kind of bespoke free trade agreement with the EU, but not membership of the single market.
Without an alternative vision for Brexit, Corbyn was relying on condemning May for shirking scrutiny, or having no clear plan. Following her announcement that there will be a white paper, he has now lost that line of attack.
Having whipped his MPs to vote through Article 50, the Labour leader is left with very little leverage to shape Brexit – or to contrast his party’s line on Brexit with that of the Tories.

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