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\u2019ve noted in the past, has an awkward habit of deleting his tweets. Often, by a strange coincidence, it\u2019s the more embarrassing proclamations that vanish into the ether \u2013 no explanation, no, \u201cApologies, friends, I buggered that up didn\u2019t I?\u201d The tweet simply vanishes as if it had never been tweeted.
I\u2019ve taken, then, to screenshot-ing some of the best morsels, just in case they\u2019re not there the next time I look. Here\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019ve already been treated to umpteen \u201cBritain\u2019s first Brexit\u201d articles, and they\u2019re not soon likely to stop \u2013 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\u2019s probably fair to suggest that Elizabeth I wasn\u2019t a big fan of European integration either. George V, though, was closely related to \u2013 indeed, shared a face with \u2013 half the other head of states in Europe during his time on the planet, so what he\u2019s doing there is anybody\u2019s 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.
\u2014 Chris Cook (@xtophercook) December 29, 2016
Okay let\u2019s be charitable and assume it\u2019s a typo, presumably for another of Henry\u2019s kids Edward VI. (It certainly wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s answer, but in the fact he bothered to answer at all. The entire exercise is entirely ludicrous. It\u2019s like asking for Theresa May\u2019s position on the dissolution of the monasteries, or Jeremy Hunt\u2019s proposals for tackling the Black Death.
The question is an ahistorical nonsense \u2013 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 that its destiny lay on the high seas, not the continent \u2013 is a notion that\u2019s core to Eurosceptic mythology, but one which didn\u2019t emerge until the imperial era. Exactly when I\u2019m not sure (unlike certain Conservative MEPs I\u2019m 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\u2019s history as a nation. For most of its history, the idea that the England was somehow not properly \u201cEuropean\u201d 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\u2019s list? Is he b*llocks.
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a two-way street,\u201d Louise Casey said of integration, early into her questioning by the Communities and Local Government committee. Instead, she described it as a \u201cbloody great motorway\u201d with new arrivals on \u201ca slipway\u201d:
\u00ab\u00a0The people in the middle, the motorway, of course they have to adjust a little bit but the general thing moves in the same direction. \u00a0\u00bb
Casey was there to talk about her recent review on integration, which focused on British South Asian Muslim communities.
Depressing commuter metaphors, she likes to be blunt. She joked she preferred the \u201cshove\u201d unit to the famed \u201cnudge\u201d policy unit. One of her reasons for wanting to promote English is \u201cit would mean we didn\u2019t have to do bloody translation leaflets\u201d. On Rotherham, the town now associated with a child grooming scandal, she said: \u201cThe English Defence League milked the hell out of that town.\u201d
Casey herself seems driven by both a Cameronesque muscular liberalism, and a host of petty irritations. On the one hand, she returned again and again to theme of gender equality, and women isolated within an already marginalised community. Her concern for child welfare is clear.
On the other, many of the examples she dwelt on seemed strangely trivial \u2013 a student taught to rewire Pakistani rather than UK plugs, Eastern Europeans who didn\u2019t put the bins out right, and the lack of Guardian Soulmates in certain minority communities (Labour MP for Bethnal Green Rushanara Ali pointed out that there are plenty of faith-based apps available). \u201cNobody told them to queue,\u201d Casey said sadly of new arrivals to the country.
She said she had uncovered examples of extremism in schools, a worrying revelation. But her most concrete example was gender segregation, which she mentioned again and again, without apparently noticing how widespread it is in mainstream education. Eton, you have been warned.
The world conjured up by Casey is one of claustrophobic neighbourhoods, rotten boroughs and twitching lace curtains. It\u2019s clear Casey has paced the streets of Britain\u2019s left behind towns, knocked on many doors and sat in many dusty local authority back rooms.
\u201cYou don\u2019t see enough of the good practice there in the report,\u201d said SNP MP for Glasgow Central, Alison Thewliss, one of the few MPs not nodding along.
Casey said she wanted to focus on the priorities for improvement, not what was already done well. \u00ab\u00a0The thing about Scotland, is its population is smaller than London,\u201d she explained. \u201cSo getting things done in Scotland is more straightforward. \u00a0\u00bb Thewliss no doubt made a note to tell Holyrood.
But it\u2019s a shame neither she nor the majority of MPs set aside more time to discuss some of the more hopeful findings of her report Like the fact, despite Casey\u2019s avowed wish to go home \u201cand watch telly\u201d at night, 82 per cent of us socialise with someone from a different ethnic or religious background. Or the fact 89 per cent of us consider our community cohesive \u2013 more than at the height of New Labour. Maybe everyone on the motorway could do with some examples of good driving.<\/p>\n

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