A prominent Brexiteer has admitted the UK should have stayed in the EU single market after Brexit.
Lord Daniel Hannan, a former Tory MEP who was one of the founders of the Vote Leave Campaign, has now claimed it would have saved “a lot of trouble”.
Writing for the [Telegraph](https://archive.ph/1cAZS), however, he said that going back now would be “madness”.
“Staying in the single market, or large parts of it, would have saved us a lot of trouble,” he said.
“Had we declared, immediately after the 2016 vote, that we intended to return to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – the body we founded in 1960 as an alternative to the EEC – we would not have been at risk of an EU trade embargo. The withdrawal issues, notably the management of the Irish border, would have been much more easily resolved.”
Lord Hanna said he would have preferred a “Swiss-type accommodation,” but in 2015 before the Brexit vote he claimed no one had been talking about leaving the single market.
He said pro-Brexit voters had often complained that being part of the EU was supposed to be an admission to a common market, not a common government.
Despite this, he said the polarised nature of the Brexit campaign meant “positions hardened on both sides”.
“Even as the results came in, I still expected an outcome that was broadly à la Suisse – inside many of the EU’s economic structures, but outside its political structures and its Customs Union,” he said.
With Therese May, who had been a Remainer, succeeding David Cameron as Prime Minister he said a smooth Brexit process ultimately ended up as a “culture war”.
“An opportunity was lost – and lost permanently,” he said.
Staying in the single market, he said, would have helped to ease the Brexit transition and “spare us a lot of broken friendships…that moment has now passed”.
He explained the Britain paid a steep price for total regulatory freedom during the withdrawal talks.
“To have made that payment but now not to use the freedom would be senseless,” he said.
Summarising the current situation, he said that the UK opted for “complete autonomy” in every sphere.
This included independent food standards, but this means checks at EU borders but also being allowed to sign more ambitious trade deals.
Having independent financial service rules, he said, means the loss of automatic passporting at the EU border, but that also allows the sector to become more internationally competitive.
Independent migration rules have resulted in labour shortages, and a more complicated life for UK citizens on the European continent who need to access local welfare services.
An upside, he added, was to have a points-based system to attract global talent.
Lord Hannan said the big problem was that despite choosing total freedom that costs short term pain, the UK has done little to use that freedom.
He cited disappointing trade talks with Australia and New Zealand and little change to financial regulations.
Concluding, he said: “Brexit could have created a freer, more prosperous and more global Britain. Instead, we are pursuing semi-socialist economic policies, which poll well in the short-term, but condemn us to long-term poverty.”
*Allan Preston*
June 05 2022 03:51 PM
Thanks captain hindsight
Not my fault I wanted it to be sun shine and lollypop but the socialist have ruined it.
>James Oh Brien (@mrjamesob) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/mrjamesob/status/1533372510200274945#m)
>
>Hannan accepted a peerage from Johnson for promoting the Brexit he now condemns & a seat in a House of Lords he once described as “everything that is wrong with the administration of Britain”. Like Farage, he’s always been a thick as mince arsonist masquerading as a firefighter.
–
>James Oh Brien (@mrjamesob) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/mrjamesob/status/1533373868362145792#m)
>
>One of the most dispiriting things about working briefly at the BBC was being required to treat people like Daniel Hannan as fully qualified counterweights to informed & expert contributors. The damage done to our country by such false equivalence will be with us for generations.
–
>sarah murphy (@13sarahmurphy) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/13sarahmurphy/status/1533376529132052482#m)
>
>Hannan – supposedly the ‘brains of Brexit’ – and an MEP for years… has been so spectacularly wrong on everything, so sure of his own prejudiced assumptions, so very vain in his stupid commentary…
>
>One of the absolute worst.
>
>A wrecker with no accountability but guilty as hell.
>Otto English (@Otto_English) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/Otto_English/status/1533376848108916737#m)
>
>My hot take on Hannan is that he was never able to reconcile the Britain of his childhood, colonial fantasies with the dirty, declining nation he turned up in in 1979. Like many fellow Ladybird Libertarians he thought that leaving the EEC/EU would lead to a ‘Great Britain’ reset
>
>It’s a cult. A cult of Edwardian fantasy and fake history.
–
>Dmitry Grozoubinski (@DmitryOpines) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/DmitryOpines/status/1533370159116730368#m)
>
>I’d have more time for Hannan’s fondness for the Single Market if he hadn’t ridden to Brexit atop the howling populists for whom ending Freedom of Movement was the project’s defining crusade.
>
>Libertarian galaxy brains pretended not to see the posters they were marching under.
>
>Also, I absolutely don’t give a fuck if you personally offer some incomprehensible hair-splitting bullshit about Maastricht vs Movement of Labour on a wonky interview show watched by three dozen people nationwide when the campaign you’re backing is plastering England with these:
>
>>>[Breaking Point poster](https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FFUeq_G-WAAESm4D.png)
–
just fuck you daniel hannan. you got what you wanted. now you can see the baron valley you sowed with your shit.
He should be in prison.
Y’don’t say.
If only they’d tried to warn us.
/s
Firstly, in so much as politics is now getting in the way (further financial deregulation and eviscerating fishing and farming communities that voted for Brexit doesn’t get the Tories any votes), neither does drifting towards a soft Brexit. To do so means those at the helm have to admit the hard Brexit for which they campaigned and fought so long for was a mistake. A political turnaround of such magnitude needs a get of jail free card, some sort of political optics event that shows that the current cabinet had to do it. Now one such possibility was the NI Protocol, but the U.K. government has been hell bent on being adversarial there too. So I see them politically speaking, being between a rock and a hard place. Hannan is right about one thing- two opposing sides have become too embittered, too much water has gone under the bridge.
Secondly, Brexit has been a success of sorts. For one group only of course – City of London Corporation . Hannan talks about a lack of progress on financial deregulation, but in reality, Brexit was a long term project to avoid the disruption of business as usual for the use of the London financial system as means to launder money and use British jurisdictions like the Caymans as tax havens. Brexit can often be viewed as a continued de-industrialisation of the U.K. as it’s economic reorientation moves away from manufacturing, farming, fishing etc , and expansion of the service industries. Again, linked to my first point, this isn’t a vote winner clearly, but those in the City that leveraged power, don’t really care about who’s in power. Because if you make your country dependent on the drip down GDP and tax that does come from the behemoth the financial services industry has become, even a center left Labour government won’t touch it.
These total Dicks keep coming out with crap it’s them that led us down the garden path to obscurity.
What a total scumbag. Liars like him got us into this Brexit shitshow
I think I’d probably be banned for saying what kind of justice these fraudsters deserve for causing so much harm to this country.
The most charitable thing I’ve read about Hannan is that he knew it would be a shitshow and only the lightest of brexits wouldn’t be a total disaster but he was so afraid of being shunned by the lucrative numbskulls he hangs out with he kept his mouth shut.
The Swiss arrangement he says he’d have liked entailed complying with all sorts of EU regulations, which he’s now forgotten all about.
This man has the ability to take the most infuriating position on any topic, regardless of what it is.
This man was an MEP, he knew the benefits of EU membership better than most of the population. He knew what leaving the single market would entail, so did he just not expect us to go through with it when he was championing Brexit? Did he expect us to get a better deal with the EU after we were nothing but rude and disruptive towards them after the vote? Yes, things would be easier if we remained in the single market and he should have pushed the government harder on that if that is really what he wanted.
This guys such a dick. Client of ours appeared at a committee to discuss the problems with medicines being transported from GB to NI. No matter how clearly witnesses explained the problem he refused to accept it.
Hand in your resignation and stay away from politics thanks
‘absolutely no one is talking about leaving the single market’
Slowly walking backwards from the Dover cliffs, is he?
He is a thick cunt who thinks he is clever. A clever person for stupid people.
Most prominent brexiteers didn’t vote for Johnson’s absolutely rock bottom extra hard brexit. I mean brexit is shit show, but there was no need for it to be this bad.
He is saying short term pain for long term gain, and this was a result of hardening positions and the idea that anything less then 100% leaving was seen as a no go by remain who thought they could get a 2nd vote and overturned the first.
He isn’t wrong. The extremes on both side caused little room for a middle ground.
Blame Theresa May, she could have steered us towards this but messed it up with those red lines.
Now its an issue because its effecting peoples holidays
You won, get over it.
I glance read the name and thought it said Daniel Kinahan and that made me very confused.
And once again we see the problem of turning Brexit into a “Yes/No” referendum, where the Yes group all wanted different things, and the No group wanted just one.
no surprise there. since the tories cant blame the eu for all their malice and incompetence, they are now being called up and humiliated for it.
I respect him saying something like this. Many wouldn’t admit to any flaws in what they campaigned for or previously thought. Just look at every day life. Or politically, look at how pretty much nobody admits they supported the 2003 war, say.
“Prominent Brexiteer” sounds like a medical condition.
“I’m afraid you have a prominent brexiteer.”
It makes you promote one outcome (pre-Referendum, he was soft-Brexit), then immediately change your stance to Brextremism.
Mr. Hannan, you got exactly what you asked for. Half the country was saying nuclear Brexit would cause inflation, supply shortages, and price rises: Even if you call the Brexit supply crisis “cost of living crisis”, everyone knows the cause.
This is your bed. Grow some balls, take ownership of your mess, lay in it.
We were promised we would remain in the single market if we voted Brexit, you prune.
Threshold reached. Vote Monday evening.
Cheers for your hard work achieving your brexit for us, prick.
36 comments
A prominent Brexiteer has admitted the UK should have stayed in the EU single market after Brexit.
Lord Daniel Hannan, a former Tory MEP who was one of the founders of the Vote Leave Campaign, has now claimed it would have saved “a lot of trouble”.
Writing for the [Telegraph](https://archive.ph/1cAZS), however, he said that going back now would be “madness”.
“Staying in the single market, or large parts of it, would have saved us a lot of trouble,” he said.
“Had we declared, immediately after the 2016 vote, that we intended to return to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – the body we founded in 1960 as an alternative to the EEC – we would not have been at risk of an EU trade embargo. The withdrawal issues, notably the management of the Irish border, would have been much more easily resolved.”
Lord Hanna said he would have preferred a “Swiss-type accommodation,” but in 2015 before the Brexit vote he claimed no one had been talking about leaving the single market.
He said pro-Brexit voters had often complained that being part of the EU was supposed to be an admission to a common market, not a common government.
Despite this, he said the polarised nature of the Brexit campaign meant “positions hardened on both sides”.
“Even as the results came in, I still expected an outcome that was broadly à la Suisse – inside many of the EU’s economic structures, but outside its political structures and its Customs Union,” he said.
With Therese May, who had been a Remainer, succeeding David Cameron as Prime Minister he said a smooth Brexit process ultimately ended up as a “culture war”.
“An opportunity was lost – and lost permanently,” he said.
Staying in the single market, he said, would have helped to ease the Brexit transition and “spare us a lot of broken friendships…that moment has now passed”.
He explained the Britain paid a steep price for total regulatory freedom during the withdrawal talks.
“To have made that payment but now not to use the freedom would be senseless,” he said.
Summarising the current situation, he said that the UK opted for “complete autonomy” in every sphere.
This included independent food standards, but this means checks at EU borders but also being allowed to sign more ambitious trade deals.
Having independent financial service rules, he said, means the loss of automatic passporting at the EU border, but that also allows the sector to become more internationally competitive.
Independent migration rules have resulted in labour shortages, and a more complicated life for UK citizens on the European continent who need to access local welfare services.
An upside, he added, was to have a points-based system to attract global talent.
Lord Hannan said the big problem was that despite choosing total freedom that costs short term pain, the UK has done little to use that freedom.
He cited disappointing trade talks with Australia and New Zealand and little change to financial regulations.
Concluding, he said: “Brexit could have created a freer, more prosperous and more global Britain. Instead, we are pursuing semi-socialist economic policies, which poll well in the short-term, but condemn us to long-term poverty.”
*Allan Preston*
June 05 2022 03:51 PM
Thanks captain hindsight
Not my fault I wanted it to be sun shine and lollypop but the socialist have ruined it.
If you replace all the occurrences of the words:
**‘Prominent Brexiteer’**
with:
**‘Prominent Brexiteer and local village idiot’**
That article is a lot more entertaining.
Sweet how the blame goes on May and not Booooris.
>Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/tconnellyRTE/status/1533366828440887296#m)
>
>[***Well…***](https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FFUedAGXWQAATwEt.jpg)
–
>James Oh Brien (@mrjamesob) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/mrjamesob/status/1533372510200274945#m)
>
>Hannan accepted a peerage from Johnson for promoting the Brexit he now condemns & a seat in a House of Lords he once described as “everything that is wrong with the administration of Britain”. Like Farage, he’s always been a thick as mince arsonist masquerading as a firefighter.
–
>James Oh Brien (@mrjamesob) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/mrjamesob/status/1533373868362145792#m)
>
>One of the most dispiriting things about working briefly at the BBC was being required to treat people like Daniel Hannan as fully qualified counterweights to informed & expert contributors. The damage done to our country by such false equivalence will be with us for generations.
–
>sarah murphy (@13sarahmurphy) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/13sarahmurphy/status/1533376529132052482#m)
>
>Hannan – supposedly the ‘brains of Brexit’ – and an MEP for years… has been so spectacularly wrong on everything, so sure of his own prejudiced assumptions, so very vain in his stupid commentary…
>
>One of the absolute worst.
>
>A wrecker with no accountability but guilty as hell.
–
>Mitch Benn 🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@MitchBenn) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/MitchBenn/status/1533374001782968322#m)
>
>Daniel Hannan in Actually Right About Something For Literally The First Time In His Entire Pointless Fucking Life shock
–
>Otto English (@Otto_English) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/Otto_English/status/1533376848108916737#m)
>
>My hot take on Hannan is that he was never able to reconcile the Britain of his childhood, colonial fantasies with the dirty, declining nation he turned up in in 1979. Like many fellow Ladybird Libertarians he thought that leaving the EEC/EU would lead to a ‘Great Britain’ reset
>
>It’s a cult. A cult of Edwardian fantasy and fake history.
–
>Dmitry Grozoubinski (@DmitryOpines) – [Jun 5, 2022](https://nitter.net/DmitryOpines/status/1533370159116730368#m)
>
>I’d have more time for Hannan’s fondness for the Single Market if he hadn’t ridden to Brexit atop the howling populists for whom ending Freedom of Movement was the project’s defining crusade.
>
>Libertarian galaxy brains pretended not to see the posters they were marching under.
>
>Also, I absolutely don’t give a fuck if you personally offer some incomprehensible hair-splitting bullshit about Maastricht vs Movement of Labour on a wonky interview show watched by three dozen people nationwide when the campaign you’re backing is plastering England with these:
>
>>>[Breaking Point poster](https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FFUeq_G-WAAESm4D.png)
–
just fuck you daniel hannan. you got what you wanted. now you can see the baron valley you sowed with your shit.
He should be in prison.
Y’don’t say.
If only they’d tried to warn us.
/s
Firstly, in so much as politics is now getting in the way (further financial deregulation and eviscerating fishing and farming communities that voted for Brexit doesn’t get the Tories any votes), neither does drifting towards a soft Brexit. To do so means those at the helm have to admit the hard Brexit for which they campaigned and fought so long for was a mistake. A political turnaround of such magnitude needs a get of jail free card, some sort of political optics event that shows that the current cabinet had to do it. Now one such possibility was the NI Protocol, but the U.K. government has been hell bent on being adversarial there too. So I see them politically speaking, being between a rock and a hard place. Hannan is right about one thing- two opposing sides have become too embittered, too much water has gone under the bridge.
Secondly, Brexit has been a success of sorts. For one group only of course – City of London Corporation . Hannan talks about a lack of progress on financial deregulation, but in reality, Brexit was a long term project to avoid the disruption of business as usual for the use of the London financial system as means to launder money and use British jurisdictions like the Caymans as tax havens. Brexit can often be viewed as a continued de-industrialisation of the U.K. as it’s economic reorientation moves away from manufacturing, farming, fishing etc , and expansion of the service industries. Again, linked to my first point, this isn’t a vote winner clearly, but those in the City that leveraged power, don’t really care about who’s in power. Because if you make your country dependent on the drip down GDP and tax that does come from the behemoth the financial services industry has become, even a center left Labour government won’t touch it.
These total Dicks keep coming out with crap it’s them that led us down the garden path to obscurity.
What a total scumbag. Liars like him got us into this Brexit shitshow
I think I’d probably be banned for saying what kind of justice these fraudsters deserve for causing so much harm to this country.
The most charitable thing I’ve read about Hannan is that he knew it would be a shitshow and only the lightest of brexits wouldn’t be a total disaster but he was so afraid of being shunned by the lucrative numbskulls he hangs out with he kept his mouth shut.
The Swiss arrangement he says he’d have liked entailed complying with all sorts of EU regulations, which he’s now forgotten all about.
This man has the ability to take the most infuriating position on any topic, regardless of what it is.
This man was an MEP, he knew the benefits of EU membership better than most of the population. He knew what leaving the single market would entail, so did he just not expect us to go through with it when he was championing Brexit? Did he expect us to get a better deal with the EU after we were nothing but rude and disruptive towards them after the vote? Yes, things would be easier if we remained in the single market and he should have pushed the government harder on that if that is really what he wanted.
This guys such a dick. Client of ours appeared at a committee to discuss the problems with medicines being transported from GB to NI. No matter how clearly witnesses explained the problem he refused to accept it.
Hand in your resignation and stay away from politics thanks
‘absolutely no one is talking about leaving the single market’
Slowly walking backwards from the Dover cliffs, is he?
He is a thick cunt who thinks he is clever. A clever person for stupid people.
Most prominent brexiteers didn’t vote for Johnson’s absolutely rock bottom extra hard brexit. I mean brexit is shit show, but there was no need for it to be this bad.
He is saying short term pain for long term gain, and this was a result of hardening positions and the idea that anything less then 100% leaving was seen as a no go by remain who thought they could get a 2nd vote and overturned the first.
He isn’t wrong. The extremes on both side caused little room for a middle ground.
Blame Theresa May, she could have steered us towards this but messed it up with those red lines.
Now its an issue because its effecting peoples holidays
You won, get over it.
I glance read the name and thought it said Daniel Kinahan and that made me very confused.
And once again we see the problem of turning Brexit into a “Yes/No” referendum, where the Yes group all wanted different things, and the No group wanted just one.
no surprise there. since the tories cant blame the eu for all their malice and incompetence, they are now being called up and humiliated for it.
I respect him saying something like this. Many wouldn’t admit to any flaws in what they campaigned for or previously thought. Just look at every day life. Or politically, look at how pretty much nobody admits they supported the 2003 war, say.
“Prominent Brexiteer” sounds like a medical condition.
“I’m afraid you have a prominent brexiteer.”
It makes you promote one outcome (pre-Referendum, he was soft-Brexit), then immediately change your stance to Brextremism.
Mr. Hannan, you got exactly what you asked for. Half the country was saying nuclear Brexit would cause inflation, supply shortages, and price rises: Even if you call the Brexit supply crisis “cost of living crisis”, everyone knows the cause.
This is your bed. Grow some balls, take ownership of your mess, lay in it.
We were promised we would remain in the single market if we voted Brexit, you prune.
Threshold reached. Vote Monday evening.
Cheers for your hard work achieving your brexit for us, prick.
He should be locked up for treason.