[Ed: Torquil Dick-Erikson refers to an email sent to him by Mr Hannan, which also had the link to Mr Hannan’s latest article in the DT (paywalled) on why he is standing as MEP for the Tories. Mr Hannan refers to his own website where his articles are to be found. That article however hasn’t yet been put on his website. We cannot reproduce Mr Hannan’s email and article for privacy and copyright reasons.]
Dear Mr Hannan,
You once praised me for having opposed – successfully – Commissioner Frattini’s attempt in 2006 to “comunitarise”, ie to Europeanise, our Justice and Home Affairs. You will recall I am the person who in 1997 revealed the EU’s Corpus Juris plan to impose a Napoleonic-inquisitorial code of criminal law on the UK, trashing our unique Magna Carta heritage of safeguards for individual freedom. According to Professor John Spencer of Cambridge University, the British co-author of the Corpus Juris plan, I am the person chiefly responsible, with my writings, for having influenced the media and hence the govt to reject it.
I hope I may thereby gain your attention for a few minutes.
I have long admired your eloquent and lucid analyses of the EU project, and your opposition to it. I see here you are standing again for the European Parliament.
Fine.
But what surprises me is to see that you are standing in the ranks of the Tory Party!
Do you not think that a vote for you, despite all your splendid rhetoric, will be counted as a vote for the Party and its Leader who wants to keep us shackled indefinitely in a state of vassalage to Brussels? Are you not thus acting as a decoy duck, to lure those who admire you into a trap, voting for what will turn out to be their own, and their country’s, self-destruction?
Why does your article completely ignore the disastrous terms of Mrs May’s misnamed “Withdrawal” Agreement? You write:
“The reason that Brexit has not been delivered is not that the government secretly opposes the idea. It is that it lacks a majority in Parliament.”
The government, led by Remainer Theresa May, with Remainer Philip Hammond as Chancellor of the Exchequer, most certainly does oppose the idea, and the act, of Brexit.
Mrs May says that the only alternative to accepting her disastrous WA is to cancel Brexit. This is utterly false, and you surely must know it. The other alternative exists, and it is to leave with No Deal. This will mean breaking free from the oppressive shackles that bind us, taking back control over our own destiny, certainly not “falling off a cliff“ according to the tired rhetoric of the Remainers which I am sure you do not share. And this is the default automatic solution under Art. 50, which our Parliament cannot simply and flatly legislate against, but which Mrs May’s government is seeking to thwart by her continual requests for an extension of the deadline.
Contrary to what you think, the government does secretly oppose the idea, and the act, of Brexit.
Oh, we know that Mrs May continually talks about “delivering Brexit”.
But her “secret” real intention is actually buried inside her WA. Its 585 pages of turgid prose are a (deliberate) disincentive to reading it. However you, and all the MPs, must do so, before voting on it. Those who have done so have described it as an Act not of Withdrawal but of Surrender, which leaves us “half-in and half-out” of the EU, the half-in being that we are still obliged to obey all their laws and decisions, in a state of servile subjection (just read article 95, paras 1 and 3 !), and the half-out being that we no longer have any say in how they are made. The worst of all worlds. The status of a colony, governed from Brussels. The last colony governed from Brussels was the Congo. Not a happy prospect.
Your line of reasoning seems to be “Vote Tory, or the horrible unreconstructed Marxist Jeremy Corbyn will get into number 10.” This may sound plausible, but it is illogical.
To start with, Mrs May herself is having talks with the horrible J Corbyn to find a way of getting her dreadful “deal” approved. This is already causing disgust to thousands of your Party’s members, and if they do reach an agreement millions of voters will be persuaded that the distinction between Tory and Labour is actually only a facade, certainly as regards our EU membership.
She really is locking the Tory party into a kamikaze trajectory – the supreme purpose of preserving our shackles to the EU “must” be achieved, even if the Party is destroyed in the process.
And in any case, this election is not a General Election, to determine who will govern Britain. It is only an election to the European Parliament, where UK MEPs have always had little or no influence, and where they are due to leave after only a few months anyway, when their seats will be abolished.
Have you not wondered why the EU, and the UK govt, want to take part in these EP elections, since they will serve no visibly useful purpose?
The answer is pretty obvious: these elections will serve as a de facto 2nd referendum. The aim is to overturn the verdict of 23rd June 2016.
There will be two parties running which are pro-Brexit, UKIP and The Brexit Party. And all the other parties, the LibLabConSnpGreenPlaid are against Brexit. It hardly matters how the seats are distributed. What will matter will be the total numbers of votes won by UKIP+TBP, versus the total number of votes won by LibLabConSnpGreenPlaid. If the latter outweigh the former, then our Remainer political class will feel able to say, “See? the People have changed their minds! They had the opportunity to reconfirm the 2016 vote by voting TBP or UKIP, but instead they chose to vote for one of the legacy parties which are not for Brexit. So we are now authorised to withdraw our article 50 notice.”
You, Dan Hannan, are a famed and admired spokesman for Brexit. Many may well vote for you, thinking thereby to help the Brexit cause. But their votes will be added into the total votes for LibLabConSnpGreenPlaid, which will be counted as anti-Brexit votes. Your role therefore, alas, will be to syphon off Brexit support and convert it into its effective opposite.
Why not talk to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s sister, Annunziata? She has been a Conservative ever since the age of five (!). Yet she has realised that running for the Tories this time will mean helping to drive the Brexit cause into the ditch.
So she is running for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. You could take a leaf from her book.
Or you could join UKIP, as your erstwhile MEP colleague Roger Helmer did.
What you cannot do is to remain with the Tory party in this election, and at the same time say you are standing for Brexit.
I don’t know if you heard these speeches today, but they are instructive.
Regards,
Torquil Dick-Erikson
This a good analysis of what en EP election would mean in the UK. I wholeheartedly agree. The choice would be Leave or Remain and then pick your party. With LibLabCon on one side and UKIP/TBP on the other.
It would be a big mistake to assume that because there are those in the former group who have spoken out against the EU that that amounts to a mitigation of the the democratic betrayal of those parties. As we have seen there have been a number of so called Brexiteers who have now voted for the WA. If ever there was a betrayal that would be a very good example and their behaviour is disgraceful.
Unfortunately, as there are undoubtedly some good people they MUST all be tarred with the same brush. To me the good ones would be the ones who have got the integrity and courage to leave the discredited parties, there can be no exceptions considering the importance of the issue.
D. Hannan is the latest disappointment, unless of course he responds reasonably to your point.
In this ruthless world of self interest and clever corruptness disappointment I suppose is a given and the bad heavily outnumber the good.
To my mind we must press the betrayal of the Withdrawal Agreement. Only by shouting this from the rooftops and informing as many as possible will people, both Leave and Remain, fully understand what an absolute disgraceful rabble we have in OUR Parliament.
Thank you for the essay.
Torquil good to see you still fighting the Hydra Beast. I enjoyed meeting you and am continuing the battle where and when I can. I Brexited and moved to the US and took US Citizenship (makes three now so I am able to travel easily). My two youngest came with me and are happy and the eldest is in the process of moving here too. I am (as you are) too old to hit the streets but your writing and my being a Burr under the saddle help. Remember when we met we were a few people the mainstream labeled as nutters. I am please to have shared that accolade with you. I hope you are well.
With regard to the defacto second referendum.
‘And all the other parties, the LibLabConSnpGreenPlaid are against Brexit’
Yes they are in practice as we have found out, but the main ones, Labour and Conservatives fought the last general election on a Brexit platform ie they said they would honour the result of THE referendum. Many in those parties would have voted for them on that basis and hopefully will switch if they voted leave.
In any event I don’t think it is valid to regard a vote for these parties necessarily as a vote to remain (but it is the EU we are dealing with!)
As long as the second referendum question is EXACTLY the same as the wording on the first referendum I don’t see any problem – Brexiteers’ views have hardened I believe. The problem will be if the question on the second referendum paper is ‘remain’ or ‘remain’.
Worry is that they would rig it as far as possible to get the Remain vote up: 16 year olds, expats who left 15 years ago, EU nationals, pretend to close Nissan etc. if it goes the wrong way again and so on.
You’re right.
Get ready
Yes Debbie I agree. Although I was specifically referring to the Europarl elections as the de facto second referendum as Torquil mentions, I have no fear of a second proper referendum, although I don’t see the need for it, the people have spoken clearly already.
If, as remain keep alleging, we did not know or understand what we were voting for, that cannot now be used in any argument, we have had three years of Brexit- to- the- eyeballs, no stone unturned. So there is no case for changing the question, if the question was good enough then “with insufficient knowledge” it must surely be good enough now, unchanged, that we “have the knowledge”.
As Sir John Redwood points out, the LabCon manifestos for such a referendum would be interesting. If the manifestos are basically unchanged – You lied to us before why trust you now?
If changed, well what in particular has changed , not the EU, so what is it exactly, and why have you changed the manifesto, didn’t you know what you were doing the first time? – and -You lied to us before, why trust you now?
The question: “You lied to us before, why should we trust you now?” can be applied not only to the referendum result but to the whole of the LabCon manifesto.
not only the eu but this traitorist government. There are very few in the mould of Sir John Redwood look at that other John ex of the eu saying they are gods gift