Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy…
People out there in the big wide world are often helpful enough to point me towards Daniel Hannan\u2019s latest brainfarts. He\u2019s pretty prolific, but some of his work seems so boneheaded that I\u2019ll get the same link sent to me by two, three, or, on one occasion, five different people.
This week it was this particular tweet \u2013 a retweet from last September; it\u2019s all repeats on the internet these days \u2013 that everyone seemed keen to point me towards.
It\u2019s like Ayn Rand has been reincarnated in the form of 15 year old hoping to study PPE at Oxford, isn\u2019t it? That tweet suggests a world view so comfortingly simple that nobody actually needs money, and if you try to tax anyone anything they might decide to stop earning any in a fit of pique. (At time of writing, incidentally, Daniel Hannan has yet to resign his job as a Member of the European Parliament.)
If I get too far into this one, though, there\u2019s a danger I\u2019ll find myself attempting to disprove the assumptions of classical economics through the medium of sarcasm, and while I\u2019m not shy about my own abilities to bullshit, I think that may be a bit beyond me. So instead I\u2019m just going to leave it there for everyone to marvel at while we talk about flags.
Daniel Hannan\u2019s header has been annoying me for months now, because it clearly takes place in a parallel universe in which the Anglosphere is a real thing rather than just the masturbatory fantasies of a certain type of free market ideologue. It combines the flags of the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, into a single red, white and blue monstrosity: the fact that one of Britain\u2019s best known Eurosceptics uses this as his banner pic implies, at least to me, that he thinks this is what we should have instead of the EU.
At first glance, the assumption here seems to be that Britain\u2019s natural allies are all the other countries who speak English. Except it clearly isn\u2019t that, because a lot of other countries also speak English \u2013 Ireland, India, South Africa, to name but three \u2013 yet are mysteriously missing from the flag.
A better definition might be that it\u2019s the bits of the British Empire where our forefathers planted their own colonies and attempted to wipe out the natives, rather than simply lording it over them through a combination of divide-and-rule and Maxim guns. More charitably, it’s the places that have a slightly misty-eyed relationship to the same stuff \u2013 free markets, Magna Carta, the notion that Britain invented freedom \u2013 that Dan himself does.
The notion of the Anglosphere is not entirely without foundation: these five countries constitute the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which implies a certain degree of closeness, and there\u2019s a fair amount of military co-operation too. In the event of a nuclear holocaust, indeed, one of the instructions British prime ministers can leave for their nuclear subs is, basically, \u201cYou are now Australian. \u00a0\u00bb
But nonetheless oh my god, mate, are you actually high? The Anglosphere is not a political unit \u2013 outside the world of George Smiley and GI JOE, it might as well not exist \u2013 and the idea of a US that is increasingly a) diverse but b) protectionist going anywhere near that kind of thing is just delusional. Dan is basically just saying he\u2019d be happier if Britain’s primary allies were countries which we founded, which speak English, and which contain depressingly high concentrations of people who agree with him.
I was going to end with a crack about how the Anglosphere flag was such a work of science fiction that Dan might as well employ the flag of Star Trek \u2019s United Federation of Planets or, if that was too lefty, the Terran Federation from Blake\u2019s 7 (at least everyone there speaks English). But I\u2019ve had a better idea. There is another rainy, sea-faring kingdom in a popular work of fantasy that recently took advantage of continent-wide chaos to break away from a larger political unit. In what may or may not a foretaste of things to come, it later used it as an excuse to attack its former allies.
I am talking, of course, about the Iron Islands from Game of Thrones .
What is dead may never die.
If Labour wants to recover as a political force, in Scotland or nationally, it must do the hard work of selling voters on a British, progressive party. But some in both the SNP and Labour sense a shortcut – a \u00ab\u00a0progressive alliance\u00a0\u00bb.
Progressives might be naturally cautious about taking advice from a Conservative, but anybody covering Scottish politics for a Tory website is very familiar with life in the doldrums. And there are a few things to be learnt down there.
First, as Scottish Labour members will tell anyone who listens , the SNP talk an excellent progressive game, particularly on any area where they\u2019re in opposition. But in government the Nationalists have simply navigated by two stars – differentiating Scotland from England to the greatest extent possible, and irritating as few people as possible , all in order to engineer support for independence.
Independence itself would, according to nearly all objective assessments, involve a sharp adjustment in Scottish public expenditure, and painful consequences for those who depend on it. Yet this does little to dent the SNP\u2019s enthusiasm. All their political reasoning is worked out backwards from that overriding goal.
There is no reason to believe that the nationalists’ priorities at Westminster would be any different. Joining the SNP in \u00ab\u00a0progressive alliance\u00a0\u00bb would be a poison pill for Labour.
For the larger party would be in a double bind. Govern cautiously, respecting the relative weakness of the left in England and Wales, and the SNP will paint its coalition partner as \u00ab\u00a0Red Tory\u00a0\u00bb, taking credit for whatever was popular in Scotland and disowning the rest.
But drive through a more radical programme with SNP votes (presumably after dismantling \u00ab\u00a0English Votes for English Laws\u00a0\u00bb), and risk permanently alienating huge sections of the electorate south of the border. Those Miliband-in-Salmond\u2019s-pocket pictures would be just the start.
Scottish Labour is familiar with the reality of the SNP in power. But that’s not to say it isn’t making its own mistakes. Too often, it tries to strike the same sort of bargain with small-n nationalism.
Constitutionally-focused politics isn\u2019t kind to social democrats, as Irish Labour will tell you. So it\u2019s clear why Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale would wish to believe that there is a split-the-difference constitutional position which would, as this article has it , offer \u201can escape from the black and white world of referendum politics\u201d.
But incantations about \u00ab\u00a0federalism\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0home rule\u00a0\u00bb aren\u2019t going to save Labour. They\u2019re an attempt to appeal to everybody, and are neither intellectually nor politically adequate to the challenge facing the party.
Holyrood is already one of the most powerful sub-state legislatures on earth, so \u00ab\u00a0federalism\u00a0\u00bb is at this point mostly a question of how England is run. If \u201cmore powers\u201d were actually going to stop nationalism, we\u2019d have seen some evidence of it during the last 20 years.
And as political tactics go, it won\u2019t woo back voters whom the SNP have persuaded that independence is a progressive cause, but it will alienate voters who care about the union.
Here, Scottish Labour should learn from the Conservatives. The leader in Scotland, Ruth Davidson, realised that voters were always going to have better non-Conservative options on the ballot paper than the Tories, so there was no way back that didn\u2019t involve selling voters on Conservatism. A new Conservatism in important respects, but nonetheless a British, centre-right party.
Labour too must recognise that they are never going to be a more appealing option than the SNP to voters who believe separatism is a good idea. Instead, they must sell voters on what they are: a British, centre-left party. The progressive case for Britain, and against independence, is there to be made.
Labour needs to sell the United Kingdom, and the Britishness underlying it, as a progressive force. As long as left-wing voters remain attached to independence and the SNP, despite all the implications, Labour will be marginalised and the union in danger.
Henry Hill is assistant editor of ConservativeHome, and has written their Red, White, and Blue column on Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland since 2013. Follow him @HCH_Hill.<\/p>\n

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