Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy…
Daniel Hannan, as I’ve noted in the past, has an awkward habit of deleting his tweets. Often, by a strange coincidence, it’s the more embarrassing proclamations that vanish into the ether – no explanation, no, “Apologies, friends, I buggered that up didn’t I?” The tweet simply vanishes as if it had never been tweeted.
I’ve taken, then, to screenshot-ing some of the best morsels, just in case they’re not there the next time I look. Here’s one now:
Funny thing about that tweet is that Danny Boy has not, at time of writing, deleted it. Despite the fact he was tricked into embarrassing himself by a mean-spirited Remoaner, it’s still sitting there on the internet looking for all the world like its author is not crippled with embarrassment at the fact he could have been such a dunderhead as to write it. Two things are wrong with it, one relatively small, the other so huge as to be all encompassing.
The small one lies in the choice of monarchs. Not all of them are unreasonable: Henry VIII famously broke with the Catholic Church in his search for a divorce, an heir, and a quick bonk with Anne Boleyn. Since that meant an end to the period in which the English crown was answerable to a higher authority in the form of the Pope, we’ve already been treated to umpteen “Britain’s first Brexit” articles, and they’re not soon likely to stop – all this, despite the fact the big man liked to go around telling people he was also the King of France.
Similarly England spent much of the reign of his daughter trying to avoid being swallowed by the Spanish Empire, so it’s probably fair to suggest that Elizabeth I wasn’t a big fan of European integration either. George V, though, was closely related to – indeed, shared a face with – half the other head of states in Europe during his time on the planet, so what he’s doing there is anybody’s guess.
The truly vexing inclusion, though, is Edward V. Is Daniel Hannan really saying that a boy king who reigned for 79 days and was murdered by a wicked uncle at the age of 12 had serious concerns about the European project? Was it the damage that the Combined Agricultural Policy wrought on developing world farmers that Edward was brooding about in his tower? The money wasted on repeatedly moving the European Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg? What?
@JonnElledge To be fair, if you’d ask the Princes in the Tower if they wanted to leave or remain, I’d bet they’d vote leave.
— Chris Cook (@xtophercook) December 29, 2016
Okay let’s be charitable and assume it’s a typo, presumably for another of Henry’s kids Edward VI. (It certainly wasn’t Edward III who spent much of his reign trying to get into Europe, by kicking off an endless war with France.) But the bigger problem here lies not in the specifics of Daniel’s answer, but in the fact he bothered to answer at all. The entire exercise is entirely ludicrous. It’s like asking for Theresa May’s position on the dissolution of the monasteries, or Jeremy Hunt’s proposals for tackling the Black Death.
The question is an ahistorical nonsense – not just because the European Union was invented in the late 20th century to deal with problems specific to a particular time, but because it misunderstands how England’s role in Europe has evolved over the centuries.
For the first five hundred years or so after the Conquest, the nations of the British Isles were a key part of a western European political system that included France and the Low countries. Until it lost Calais in 1558, indeed, the English Crown generally held territory in France.
The idea that the United Kingdom, as the state became, was with Europe but not of it – that its destiny lay on the high seas, not the continent – is a notion that’s core to Eurosceptic mythology, but one which didn’t emerge until the imperial era. Exactly when I’m not sure (unlike certain Conservative MEPs I’m not afraid to admit my ignorance, which is what makes us better than the animals and egg avatars). However you count it, though, the period between then and 1973 must make up a minority of England’s history as a nation. For most of its history, the idea that the England was somehow not properly “European” would have seemed crazy.
Actually, there was one major European project which a king of both England and Scotland kept us out of, a policy decision confirmed by his successors. That project was a key plank of French foreign policy, grew to encompass more far flung countries like Sweden, and was launched largely to prevent the Germans from getting above themselves. It was the Thirty Years War.
But is James I & VI on Hannan’s list? Is he b*llocks.
The Liberal Democrat veteran Vince Cable is right that free movement is not going to be politically viable after Brexit. Few people have stauncher credentials than Cable as an economic, social and cultural pro-migration liberal, and he makes a strong case for his liberal tribe rising to the democratic political challenge that the referendum result presents.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn sounds somewhat conflicted over whether he should move on from free movement or continue to support it. This shift in itself, though, shows increasingly that politicians who feel immigration benefits our society, nevertheless understand the post-referendum challenge of rebuilding public confidence in how it’s managed.
The Brexit vote was about more than immigration – but the Leave majority vote undoubtedly represented a vote of no confidence in how governments have handled immigration over the last fifteen years. So the core question for those who believe that Britain benefits from migration is how to rebuild public confidence in it. Responding with a “like it or lump it” approach will squander an important opportunity.
But it is not surprising that Lib Dem party leader Tim Farron was quick to disown Cable’s remarks. Farron sees an opportunity to “speak up for the 48 per cent” – though the idea of a 48 per cent tribe of aggrieved Remainers is a mirage. About 6m of the 16m Remain voters only made up their mind in the last four weeks of the campaign. Many pragmatic Remainers now believe that the Government should act on the Leave outcome. A majority of those who voted Remain share Cable’s view that freedom of movement should end too, as the New Economics Foundation’s study of the attitudes of the 48 per cent reveals.
But even a liberal tribe of half of the 48 per cent offers a decent opportunity for a Liberal Democrat party which fell to 8 per cent of the electorate in 2015 to climb back up to 15 per cent.
You could call this strategy “Cosmopolitan Ukip” – a liberal mirror party to Nigel Farage’s populist insurgency. These populist liberals articulate a new sense of anger and dispossession in the university towns and metropolitan centres, and even steal the slogan “give us our country back”. As former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told John Harris for his Radio 4 documentary on populism , the liberals may be challenged with being an out-of-touch elite, but they can claim to be the outsiders now.
Even if Farron’s approach still makes tactical sense, there are limits to the “Cosmopolitan Ukip” approach too. Even electorally, voters are always more eclectic than pundits and activists realise. To keep their seats, Lib Dem MPs Norman Lamb in North Norfolk and Greg Mulholland in Leeds will need to combine ardent liberal Remainers with more pragmatic ex-Remain voters and, indeed, the one in three Lib Dem voters who backed Brexit in June.
