Does anybody know where the words of this can be copied and pasted? I would hate to have to type it all out – or maybe that should be ‘in’ – myself, but somebody definitely should, and if I or any commenter does find it, I will maybe add it to the bottom of this posting. As Peter Hoskin of the Spectator’s Coffee House blog says, Dan Hannan “absolutely skewers” the PM. (Can you kick someone with a skewer? Never mind.) Guido also piles in.
As my fellow scribes here say from time to time: I love the internet. In fact I love it even more than I hate Gordon Brown, and that’s saying something.
ADDENDUM Monday morning: Here it is. Thank you commenter Simon Collis, and blogger Stuart Sharpe.
Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of this Parliament – that being to say one thing in this chamber, and a very different thing to your home electorate. You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that; who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British Jobs for British Workers’, and that you have subsidised – where you have not nationalised outright – swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks.
Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words. Perhaps you would have more legitimacy in the councils of the world if the United Kingdom were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G20 country.
The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around £20,000. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child.
Now once again today you tried to spread the blame around, you spoke about an international recession; an international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squall – but not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear up their rigging – in other words, to pay off debt – but you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line, under the accumulated weight of your debt. We are now running a deficit that touches almost 10% of GDP – an unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary – countries where the IMF has already been called in.
Now, it’s not that you’re not apologising – like everyone else, I’ve long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things these things – it’s that you’re carrying on, wilfully worsening the situation, wantonly spending what little we have left. Last year, in the last twelve months, 125,000 private sector jobs have been lost – and yet you’ve created 30,000 public sector jobs. Prime Minister you cannot go on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorging of the unproductive bit.
You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re well place to weather the storm, I have to tell you, you sound like a Brezhnev-era Apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it’s nonsense. Everyone knows that Britain is the worst placed to go into these hard times. The IMF has said so. The European Commission has said so. The markets have said so, which is why our currency has devalued by 30% – and soon the voters, too, will get their chance to say so.
They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are a devalued Prime Minister, of a devalued Government.
It will be interesting to see what Britain’s mainstream media make of this. My guess is that the blogosphere will be all over this speech not just today but for a longish time, with constant links back, and that many newspapers will also refer to it during the next day or two. But how will the BBC respond? They are in a lose-lose situation, I think. Mention it, eventually, they lose. Ignore it, they look like Soviet-era buffoons, just as Hannan said Brown is. A bit like the US MSM and those tea parties.
Presumably, by the time the BBC do mention it, the story will be that the Conservatives are divided. Divided, that is to say, in that some of them think the Prime Minister is mad and evil and believe in saying so, while others merely think it.
Oh my goodness.
It’s a shame that our democracy is such that we have to rely on an MEP to say this, but still.
Bravo Mr. Hannan, I am proud to have you representing me.
Re your article – try this-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs
When Gordon met Nigel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDwQEEAZhWM
Here’s a transcript. I think the speech is, if anything, even MORE impressive in writing.
The man is brilliant. Could we please borrow him?
What impressed me was that he was able to deliver his deadly speech uninterrupted. Can you imagine the baying and jeers he would get in the House of Commons?
Transcript is here.
http://stuartsharpe.co.uk/2009/03/a-devalued-prime-minister-of-a-devalued-government-with-transcript/#more-2939
The problem is, that polticians like Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell need a libertarian-leaning party to be in, and there isn’t one of any significance. They have to either stick with the statist Tories or disappear into a wilderness of never getting elected to anything. Good old party democracy, sigh.
From what I have seen the BBC has ignored it almost totally. That organisation is more interested, as you say, in trying to run “Tories divided over X” stuff.
If or when the Tories do win the election, they really must, if they have any intelligence, take the advice of LA director Sean Gabb and shut that organisation down. Not privatise it, but destroy it.
I am an American who would very much like to import you and have you run for President! Any chance you’d consider changing teams and coming across the pond to replace this rock star we have mascarading as a president? I’d vote for you tomorrow!
Sadly the government deficit in Britain will not be “touching 10% of G.D.P”, it will be even worse than that.
As for the United States, even the Economists magazine people are admitting that the deficit will be more than 13% of G.D.P. – although the words “we were wrong to support all these bailouts and the stimulus spending” still seem to hard for them to say.
Meanwhile Prime Minister Brown and President Obama are working hard on their world government, all-governments-must-spend-even-more-money idea (as President Obama said “I am not asking anyone to do anything, but we CAN NOT have a situation where some countries are spending a lot and other countries are not” – in short he is not “asking” he is telling).
The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic has already, quite correctly, called this plan “the road to Hell”. Odd that by luck (if luck one calls it) this man holds the Presidency of the E.U. at exactly the time the globel collectivists are making their move.
So (due to above) I am on the side of at least one part of the E.U. and hold the government of the United States as now the main threat to freedom in the world.
An odd position for me to be – but a lot of other people have had to adapt to the new reality also.
Of course the E.U. may well support the policy of total collectivism eventually (especially after June), but the great conference is next week.
It was a very good speech. I have watched it, and Nigel Farage’s too. Of the sites I’ve been to only the Devil has put up Farage’s speech as well. And Farage skewered Brown about a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Just as important as Hannan’s points.
I understand why this is news in the blogosphere.
I also understand why many are annoyed that the BBC hasn’t covered it.
And I understand why they haven’t covered it.
Much as everybody here dislikes Brown and wants to see him humiliated Hannan is a little-known member of the European Parliament.
Has a speech by one of them ever been mainstream TV news?
No.
Do you think it should be mainstream TV news now?
If so please provide a reason other than that you agreed with the speech.
Then give a reason as to why, or why not, a speech by a lttle-known member of the European Parliament in praise of Brown should be reported by the BBC.
And there is no need to worry that this speech will be overlooked.According to Guido this is the most viewed youtube video of the day.
My God.
I’ve watched it twice and will watch it again.
WHERE has this guy been hiding and HOW do we get him into the spotlight.
This is EXACTLY what we need on my side of the pond and many of the same points made to the clown that got elected by saying over and over – ‘say it with me brothers and sisters, yes we can’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any chance we can draft Daniel or clone him or SOMETHING.
First time in YEARS I’ve heard a politician say something that almost makes me want to cheer.
And why is Cameron leader of the Tories? In what weird sad excuse-for-a-party does someone like him get to the top and Hannan has to languish as an MEP?
Well, one of the effects of all the attention this fine speech has been getting has been to focus attention on Hannan’s past record. And he did apparently make some rather foolish remarks about Iceland, before Iceland imploded. Iceland was apparently doing very well outside of the EU, so he was for it, regardless. That kind of thing.
As for the BBC angle, I agree with the commenter that the BBC had some good reasons for ignoring this last night. That said, the BBC does feature masses of junk from people at least as insignificant as Daniel Hannan, as news.
But, as the youngsters now say: what ever. The really good news about this news/not-news is that if bloggers think it’s news, and lots of bloggers do think this is news, then it is news. The BBC and similar organisations no longer get to decide.
My guess is that the BBC will pay some attention to this, once it realises how many other people are paying attention to it, if only because if it doesn’t at least give it a nod, probably in the form of the little bit about ships (because that bit was rather ungainly and fogeyish) it will look stupid.
Brian, Hannan has also made some pretty daft comments in favour of Obama as well, but if we’re going to try to find people who never say anything daft, we’re going to be in for a feck of a long wait.
We can at least say that his heart is in the right place, he has many sound points of view, and doesn’t mind declaring them. Which puts him above about 99% of other politicians, just for a start.
How does Hannan reconcile his job as an MEP(Link) with his duty to uphold the Act of Supremacy “that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate, spiritual or temporal, shall henceforth use, enjoy, or exercise any power, jurisdiction or authority within the realm” an act emphatically and unmistakably reaffirmed by the English Bill of Rights of 1689?
How can those who, in effect, deny the Constitution (Link)expect to receive the protection of the law of the land when the law of the land *is* the Constitution?
I wish that Mr. Hannan were running for President of the United States. He’d have my vote.
Neil Cavuto asked Mr Hannan why he endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States – and got a lot of boiler plate as a reply.
At my age I do not expect people to say (about important things) “I was wrong, I am sorry”.
But I would still welcome it.
While what he had to say was accurate – it was an inappropriate venue – can’t believe you Brits just watched your PM be humiliated – and can’t see that was a humiliation of your country??? when did we decide to abandon civility and national pride in favor of self promoting speeches? so everyone watches the thing on you tube – wowie – like that changes something? Like a speech in the EU parliament changes anything?? Why insult Brown on a personal level – isn’t it enough to criticize the policy – one is somehow admirable cause he then insults Brown’s personal mannerisms? A million speeches/YouTube viewings will not end this recession – it may be emotionally satisfying to watch it – but it has no genuine meaning
This has already made it’s way into the Newspaper-based blogs in Australia as well, which is where I first saw it yesterday
Sensational stuff.
Glen Beck had him on Fox last night.
Cecilia
The humiliation of our country is being done by the Prime Minister to the country, very publicly indeed. Whatever helps to stop that humiliation is welcome to all patriotic Brits. And this will help.
Also, it’s my understanding that diatribes of that nature are common in Parliament (although I had understood that they were more likely to occur in Commons than Lords). Isn’t that correct?