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. »
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.
As Donald Trump took the podium on a cold Washington day to deliver his inauguration speech, the world held its breath. Viewers hunched over televisions or internet streaming services watched Trump mouth \u201cthank you\u201d to the camera, no doubt wondering how he could possibly live up to his deranged late-night Twitter persona. In newsrooms across America, reporters unsure when they might next get access to a president who seems to delight in denying them the right to ask questions got ready to parse his words for any clue as to what was to come. Some, deciding they couldn\u2019t bear to watch, studiously busied themselves with other things.
But when the moment came, Trump\u2019s speech was uncharacteristically professional \u2013 at least compared to his previous performances. The fractured, repetitive grammar that marks many of his off-the-cuff statements was missing, and so, too, were most of his most controversial policy ideas.
Trump told the crowd that his presidency would \u201cdetermine the course of America, and the world, for many, many years to come\u201d before expressing his gratefulness to President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama for their \u201cgracious aid\u201d during the transition. \u201cThey have been magnificent,» Trump said, before leading applause of thanks from the crowd.
If this opening was innocent enough, however, it all changed in the next breath. The new president moved quickly to the \u201chistoric movement\u201d, \u201cthe likes of which the world has never seen before\u201d, that elected him President. Following the small-state rhetoric of his campaign, Trump promised to take power from the \u201cestablishment\u201d and restore it to the American people. \u201cThis moment,» he told them, \u201cIs your moment. It belongs to you.\u201d
A good deal of the speech was given over to re-iterating his nationalist positions while also making repeated references to the key issues \u2013 \u201cIslamic terrorism\u201d and families \u2013 that remain points of commonality within the fractured Republican GOP.
The loss of business to overseas producers was blamed for \u201cdestroying our jobs\u201d. \u201cProtection,» Trump said, \u201cWill lead to great strength. » He promised to end what he called the \u201cAmerican carnage\u201d caused by drugs and crime.
\u201cFrom this day forward,» Trump said, \u201cIt\u2019s going to be only America first. »
There was plenty in the speech, then, that should worry viewers, particularly if you read Trump\u2019s promises to make America \u201cunstoppable\u201d so it can \u201cwin\u201d again in light of his recent tweets about China.
But it was the things Trump didn’t mention that should worry us most. Trump, we know, doesn\u2019t use official channels to communicate his most troubling ideas. From bizarre television interviews to his upsetting and offensive rallies and, of course, the infamous tweets, the new President is inclined to fling his thoughts into the world as and when he sees fit, not on the occasions when he\u2019s required to address the nation (see, also, his anodyne acceptance speech).
It\u2019s important to remember that Trump\u2019s administration wins when it makes itself seem as innocent as possible. During the speech, I was reminded of my colleague Helen Lewis\u2019 recent thoughts on the \u201cgaslighter-in-chief\u201d , reflecting on Trump\u2019s lying claim that he never mocked a disabled reporter. \u201cNow we can see,» she wrote, \u201cA false narrative being built in real time, tweet by tweet. »
Saying things that are untrue isn\u2019t the only way of lying \u2013 it is also possible to lie by omission.
There has been much discussion as to whether Trump will soften after he becomes president. All the things this speech did not mention were designed to keep us guessing about many of the President\u2019s most controversial promises.
Trump did not mention his proposed ban on Muslims entering the US, nor the wall he insists he will erect between America and Mexico (which he maintains the latter will pay for). He maintained a polite coolness towards the former President and avoiding any discussion of alleged cuts to anti-domestic violence programs and abortion regulations. Why? Trump wanted to leave viewers unsure as to whether he actually intends to carry through on his election rhetoric.
To understand what Trump is capable of, therefore, it is best not to look to his speeches on a global stage, but to the promises he makes to his allies. So when the President\u2019s personal website still insists he will build a wall, end catch-and-release, suspend immigration from \u201c terror-prone regions \u201d \u201c where adequate screening cannot occur \u201d; when, despite saying he understands only 3 per cent of Planned Parenthood services relate to abortion and that \u201cmillions\u201d of women are helped by their cancer screening , he plans to defund Planned Parenthood; when the president says he will remove gun-free zones around schools \u201c on his first day \u201d — believe him.<\/p>\n

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\nSimilarity rank: 2.6\n<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: 0.7<\/div>\n

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