Daniel Hannan has an article in Saturday's Telegraph HERE urging MPs to reject the deal when it comes back to parliament next week or the week after. He is absolutely excoriating about it and calls upon MPs, "who believe that there is such a thing as national honour, and who recognise that we are being treated in a calculatedly vindictive way" to "toss it out with especial force". As usual with Hannan it is all the EU's fault. They can do no right.
The deal is so awful according to him that even a 21 month delay is preferable to accepting it as it stands, and he has Mervyn King, the former governor of the BoE, to back him up. King is also a leaver and thinks we will prosper outside the EU but thinks there are arguments for staying in or for leaving but not for "giving up the benefits of remaining without obtaining the benefits of leaving." Neither of them explain what those 'benefits' actually are - but I can see where they're coming from.
Hannan says leave voters knew precisely what they wanted and it isn't this deal:
"It is assumed that the dim-witted oafs [leave voters] cannot possibly have weighed the costs and benefits before voting, and that all that the government needs to do is to show them something that has BREXIT written on it in bright, shiny letters".
Well, he may know people who weighed up the costs and benefits before voting leave but in my experience down at the Dog & Duck, speaking to leavers as well as reading their on-line comments, they didn't think about it at all, let alone weigh things up. Most of them just read the side of a bus.
The article is typical of Hannan. It is confirmation that he never does any research for his work and simply relies on prejudice, his own and that of the average Telegraph reader.
Firstly, he claims Michel Barnier has said, "I’ll have done my job if, in the end, the exit terms are so bad that the British would rather stay in the EU”. But I can find no such quote. Try Googling the sentence with Barnier's name, the only time it appears is in a tweet on 20th January (HERE) by one D. Hannan. I do not believe the EU chief negotiator ever said such a thing.
Next he quotes Herman Von Rompuy speaking 'this week':
"...as Herman Van Rompuy, the former President of the European Council, reportedly put it this week, 'with their backs against the wall, the abyss in front of their eyes and a knife on their throat. We are nearly there.' "
I can see the quote was actually from June 2018 (HERE) not this week and didn't specifically refer to Brexit but was a jokey reference to the eleventh hour negotiations and horse trading that goes on in Brussels in order to get treaties or legislation agreed with umpteen different countries all with competing demands.
However, having said that, the former Belgian PM was absolutely right and for Hannan this is probably what hurts.
Finally, he takes aim at Martin Selmayr:
"It has been reported that the EU’s Anglophobic chief official, Martin Selmayr, calls Northern Ireland the 'price' Britain must pay for Brexit. Whether or not he spoke those exact words, the reality is clear."
Note that Selmay's words are the only ones that Hannan concedes might not have even been spoken - but crikey, that's just a detail because the 'reality is clear' - he would have said them anyway if he'd had the chance, wouldn't he? Case proved, send him down. We know what an evil genius Selmayr is so let's just make up a few quotes - he's guilty anyway.
BoJo was sacked from The Times for doing exactly the same thing but Hannan gets pride of place in The Telegraph.
The essence of his entire article is that it's better to wait until 2020 for a successful negotiation than to accept this humiliating deal in 2019.
Brexiteers like him think by refusing to accept the deal there is something better down the road. This is how negotiations go to the wire. It's why Mrs May hopes the Brexiteers will find themselves exactly where Von Rompuy suggested all those months ago - backs to the wall, the abyss in front and a knife at the throat.
We shall see what they do.
Having said all that, let us hope MPs are minded to take Hannan's advice and vote against the deal on March 12th. It will increase the sense of incompetence surrounding the government and the Tory party, although they don't need much help. It will probably bring about a delay to Brexit. The polls will show more sign of the inexorable shift to remain. The pressure to hold a second referendum will rise. What's not to like?
