64 Facts About Daniel Hannan

Daniel John Hannan, Baron Hannan of Kingsclere was born on 1 September 1971 and is a British writer, journalist and former politician serving as an adviser to the Board of Trade since 2020.

Daniel Hannan is the founding president of the Initiative for Free Trade.

Daniel Hannan was one of the founders of Vote Leave, one of the organisations that campaigned to leave the EU in 2016, and served on its board throughout the referendum.

Daniel Hannan played a prominent role in the referendum campaign, participating in a number of public debates.

Daniel Hannan stood down from the European Parliament at the United Kingdom's exit from the EU in 2020.

Daniel Hannan is editor-in-chief of The Conservative, a quarterly journal of centre-right political thought.

Daniel Hannan's mother was a Scot who had been working in the British Embassy in Lima.

Daniel Hannan grew up on his parents' farm outside Lima, attending school and university in Britain.

Daniel Hannan was educated at Winchester House School and Marlborough College.

Daniel Hannan wrote leaders for the paper until 2004, and has written blogs and columns ever since.

Daniel Hannan has since contributed to The Spectator and many other newspapers and magazines around the world.

Daniel Hannan's first act on being elected was to write an article in The Daily Telegraph about the expenses and allowances available to MEPs, which caused great controversy.

Daniel Hannan was re-elected at the top of his party's list for the South East England constituency in 2004.

In December 2018, Daniel Hannan ranked 738 out of 751 MEPs for his participation in roll call votes in the European Parliament.

When no referendum was forthcoming, Daniel Hannan began to use parliamentary procedure to draw attention to his campaign.

Daniel Hannan reacted by likening the European Parliament to 1930s Germany:.

At the relevant meeting, Daniel Hannan told members that the ideological differences between him and the majority of EPP members on the question of European integration made his expulsion their only logical choice.

Daniel Hannan duly left the group on 20 February 2008, and sat as a non-attached member until the rest of the British Conservatives followed to form the European Conservatives and Reformists following the 2009 election.

Daniel Hannan, who had campaigned against EPP membership since before his election, rejoined his colleagues in the new ECR Group in 2009, and became the first Secretary-General of its attached Euro-party, AECR, subsequently ACRE.

Parliament authorities suggest that Daniel Hannan used EU funds for ACRE to support other pet projects, such as his free-trade thinktank, the Initiative for Free Trade, as well as Conservatives International.

On 24 March 2009, after Gordon Brown had given a short speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in advance of the G20 London summit, Daniel Hannan followed up by delivering a 3-minute speech strongly criticising the response by Gordon Brown to the global financial crisis.

Daniel Hannan finished the speech with the phrase, "the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government", which was a quote taken from a 1992 speech by then-Labour Party leader John Smith about then-Prime Minister John Major.

Daniel Hannan generally criticized the NHS, saying it "puts the power of life and death in the hands of a state bureaucracy".

Daniel Hannan later said that he was "slightly perplexed" at the popularity of the speech, given that he had made similar speeches before.

Daniel Hannan, being one of the founders of the Vote Leave campaign, was at the forefront of the 2016 Referendum on membership of the European Union.

Daniel Hannan was involved in the creation of the Congress for Democracy, an umbrella organisation for various Eurosceptic groups, which reportedly contained both trade union shop stewards and UKIP activists.

Daniel Hannan clarified that what he had always advocated was that after leaving the EU, the UK should rejoin the European Free Trade Association, of which it had been a founding member, and thus retain what benefits of the single market it felt it should.

Some of those who responded were not convinced, primarily noting that if that was what Daniel Hannan felt, he should have said so "with any kind of force between 2016 and 2019, when it might have changed or meant anything", as Zoe Williams put in The Guardian.

Jonn Elledge in New Statesman concurred that Daniel Hannan was only willing to say this so bluntly when doing so carried no political risk to himself or his side.

In September 2016, Daniel Hannan launched The Conservative, a periodical publication in print volume and in an online version published quarterly.

In September 2020, Daniel Hannan was named an advisor to the British Board of Trade.

Daniel Hannan believes that local government independence is impossible without giving fiscal autonomy.

Daniel Hannan was co-author, along with 27 Conservative MPs elected in 2005, of Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party, which proposes the wholesale devolution of power and the direct election of decision-makers, and the replacement of the NHS with a private insurance system These ideas were developed further in a series of six pamphlets, The Localist Papers, serialised in The Daily Telegraph in 2007.

Daniel Hannan is an advocate of national sovereignty and has questioned the idea that "nationalism causes war".

Daniel Hannan has been referred to as a "British nationalist" and "British Gaullist".

Daniel Hannan argues in his writings and in the media for ballot initiatives, a power of recall, fixed term parliaments, local and national referendums, open primaries and the abolition of party lists.

Daniel Hannan is an advocate of Single Transferable Vote as a replacement for the UK's First Past The Post system of voting.

Daniel Hannan wrote in March 2011, criticizing anti-austerity protesters, stating they "have decided to indulge their penchant for empty, futile, self-righteous indignation".

Daniel Hannan has suggested that the UK adopt a globally free-trading policy after Brexit, and has suggested that the UK should join the trans-pacific partnership.

Daniel Hannan is on the International Board of Students for Liberty, a non-profit group operating globally to encourage classical liberalism and liberal economics.

Daniel Hannan has a 'deep admiration' of the United States, and describes himself as an Atlanticist with positive views of the United States as well as other nations of the Anglosphere.

Daniel Hannan opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq undertaken during the premiership of Tony Blair.

Daniel Hannan has proposed that British foreign policy pivot away from the European Union towards the United States and the Commonwealth.

Daniel Hannan endorsed then-Democratic candidate Barack Obama for President on 18 October 2008 against John McCain.

Daniel Hannan stated that a McCain presidency would mean an "imperial overstretch", particularly arguing that the US should have been preparing to leave Iraq immediately.

Daniel Hannan regretted his endorsement, which he called in his blog his "single most unpopular post" in his blogging career, and backed Mitt Romney in 2012.

Daniel Hannan has frequently been critical of England's National Health Service.

Daniel Hannan has claimed the NHS has left Britain with low survival rates for cancers and strokes, a high risk of becoming more ill in hospital, and with constant waiting lists.

Daniel Hannan remarked on American television at a time when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was being debated that he "wouldn't wish it [the NHS] on anyone".

In 2015, writing for The Washington Examiner, Daniel Hannan claimed the popular support for the NHS in the UK was a consequence of the wider public being "passively conscripted" by a "knot of hardline leftists" like those who had harassed his mother after he criticised the NHS.

In July 2018, Daniel Hannan wrote in his Telegraph column regarding the Government's Chequers Proposal.

Distinct from the Government's position and from that of the ERG, Daniel Hannan argued that MPs should vote for the proposal despite its shortcomings, so long as it is not "watered down further".

Daniel Hannan claimed that with Chequers, the UK Government was begging for the kind of deal the EU has with Moldova and Albania, who themselves only sought as a transitional arrangement towards full membership.

In spring 2012, Daniel Hannan suggested in a Daily Telegraph article that an accommodation be made between the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party, and would be preferable to one with the Liberal Democrats.

Daniel Hannan argued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic that the COVID-19 virus was not as serious to the general population as was widely believed.

Daniel Hannan was very critical of the UK government's response to the pandemic, arguing against restrictions on public mobility.

Daniel Hannan first expressed this view in February 2020 in an article he wrote in the website Conservative Home, and stuck to it consistently through the lockdown.

Daniel Hannan is a supporter of bullfighting and has written several articles in the Telegraph and elsewhere promoting the activity.

In 2009, Daniel Hannan was awarded the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism for his Telegraph blog.

Daniel Hannan won the award for Speech of the Year at the 2009 Spectator Awards, for his Gordon Brown speech in the European Parliament.

Daniel Hannan won the 2012 Columbia Award and the 2014 Paolucci Book Award.

Daniel Hannan was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in blogging in 2011.

In 2014, Daniel Hannan won the Political Books Awards polemic of the year award, for his book How We Invented Freedom and Why It Matters.

In 2017, Daniel Hannan received the Whittaker Chambers Award from the National Review Institute in person from John O'Sullivan.