Around The World With Dan Hannan

Transcript

Andrew Roberts:
Dan Hannan is a writer, journalist, and member of the House of Lords. He's an advisor to the Board of Trade, and was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2020. Dan, there's a concept called CANZUK that I know that both of us have been involved in for some years, but I'm not sure that all our American listeners, in particular, will have heard of it. What is this, and tell us about it?

Daniel Hannan:
Well, CANZUK is the acronym that stands for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. And the CANZUK proposal, the proposition of CANZUK, is that there should be free trade and free movement of labor, as well as enhanced military and diplomatic cooperation among those countries. Now, you might say, well, why not the Five Eyes? Why not the US? It's the obvious question. I think the answer is because free trade and free movement will be more problematic for a US administration than for the other four, but that's, ultimately, where we'd like to get to.

Andrew Roberts:
The US trade deal that people talked about quite a lot, especially, during the Brexit negotiations, hasn't happened. Do you see any immediate prospect for it either with President Trump or President Biden?

Daniel Hannan:
No, and I'm afraid the problem is this. Our timing is always wrong. Since Brexit, we have been the Rhett and Scarlet of international commerce. When one partner is in the mood, the other one is not. So, obviously, it couldn't happen pre-Brexit, and we had plenty of friendly invitations from the Bushes, and so on, but as long as we were in the EU, the EU controlled our trade. Trump was very clear that he was up for doing a deal, but Theresa May wasted that time arguing about whether we should stay in the customs union, although she didn't put it that way. By the time we finally made up our mind to go for it, we were in the last days of the Trump Administration, and Biden was not in the mood for doing trade deals with anyone, and particularly not with us. He's anti-Brexit and pro EU.
If Trump wins, again, one assumes it would be back on the agenda, but we are overwhelmingly likely to have a Starmer-led government here, and so again, the ardor would have cooled. So should we just drop the whole thing? Well, I think there is, actually, a way through. And the way through is this. The US could recover strategic leadership in the Pacific and challenge Chinese ambitions in that region by resuming its leadership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Now, your listeners might say there's no way that Trump is going to agree to that. He was against it the first time round. And it's true. He was. He was against it partly on protectionist grounds and partly because Obama had negotiated it.
When the US pulled out of negotiations that had been expressly designed around US commercial and strategic interests, the Chinese couldn't believe their luck. They immediately applied to join. Fortunately, the other members were not interested in Chinese membership. They said the whole thing here is to have a counterweight to China, and so they invited the United Kingdom in. Listeners wondering how we qualify as a Pacific country will perhaps be interested to know that we own the Pitcairn Islands with 48 inhabitants, which are pretty much slap bang in the middle of the Pacific. They're all bounty mutineer descendants, and they allowed us to join this regional block under WTO rules.
Now, looked at from a conservative point of view, this is a very attractive trade deal. It's about mutual recognition, it's not about harmonization. It's about trade and the removal of obstacles. It's not about workers' rights and environmental protection, and all the other extraneous things that lefties like to put into it. The world is waiting. Here are all the Western allies, the Australians, the Japanese and so on, waiting for US leadership. And I think the way to get a US/UK trade deal would be through CANZUK. And that would, by the way, then bring together all of the Five Eyes countries, and would be, if you like, a nest within which we could arrange for an even deeper trade agreement among ourselves.

Andrew Roberts:
It's got a lot of history, hasn't it, CANZUK? This is a history podcast, and that's what we concentrate on. And the fact that the CANZUK countries all have the same head of state, they have the same historical background, fought in both of the world wars from beginning to end, and so on. These are other things. I know that you, as a free trader, are philosophically and intellectually in favor of free trade, but you are also, because you're interested in history, philosophically and emotionally connected to those old commonwealth countries, aren't you?

Daniel Hannan:
Well, I think it's very difficult for any British person not to be. I still rather choke up whenever I read the words of the, then, New Zealand Labour Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage when he declared war in 1939. Where she goes, we go. You can't not be moved by the thought of all these young men crossing half the world, in many cases, to take up arms for a country on which they've never set eyes.

Andrew Roberts:
I've just come back from Vimy Ridge, and seeing those rows upon rows of Canadian young men, its [inaudible 00:05:37].

Daniel Hannan:
It's incredibly moving. But I wouldn't want listeners to think that this is mainly, or even, to any significant degree, a nostalgic or sentimental proposition. It is actually much more practical than that. We're in a world which is turning its back on the thing that made everyone rich over the last 70 years, which is the removal of obstacles, the extension of supply lines, and comparative advantage and specialization. And when you have a coalition of the willing, if you like, not only on strategic issues, but on commercial issues, you use it. It would be crazy not to.
So I think CANZUK, and indeed Britain's Pacific ambitions, are partly just leaning towards countries, not just Australia or New Zealand, but places like Chile and Singapore, that are open-minded about unrestricted trade, which ... in every age, it's unpopular. The great historian, Macaulay, exactly 200 years ago, in 1824 said, "Free trade, the greatest benefit that a government can bestow on our people, is in every nation unpopular." And it was true then, and it has been true for every single one of the intervening 200 years, because free trade is a counterintuitive notion for a tribal species like ours, and yet it works every time. It makes us richer, it makes us happier, and it makes us freer.

Andrew Roberts:
How about AUKUS in all of this? Do you see that as a positive development in two things, really? First of all, obviously, a move towards the CANZUK concept of defense in the Pacific, but also drawing the Americans in.

Daniel Hannan:
Yes, very much so. And you, Andrew, as a historian, will appreciate, I think, [inaudible 00:07:23] traditional blue water vocation as a nation. You and I grew up during what was geo-strategically a highly anomalous period, where Britain's strategic focus was the defense of Western Europe. And we had to behave like a land power for perfectly good reasons. We were defending NATO and European democracy against a very serious extant threat. But in the longer sweep of things, that time from 1940 to 1990 was actually very unusual. And I see AUKUS, and the Pacific trade deal, and indeed our closer relations with India, all as a return to what was, if you like, the position that is much more naturally decreed by our history and our geography, as a maritime nation connected, by language and law, to the rest of the English-speaking world.

Andrew Roberts:
But AUKUS, obviously, also, has a powerful anti-Chinese element to it. Are you worried about the rise of China?

Daniel Hannan:
Yes, I am. I see China as our chief ideological rival, by which I mean the following. I don't just mean that they are a geo-strategic rival, in the short term, in the way that Russia or Iran is. I mean, that they've built an alternative civilizational model with a very different relationship between state and citizen. What's happened in China since Xi Jinping took over in 2011, 2012, has happened very suddenly, and largely unnoticed outside. The destruction of any kind of independent space for writers and journalists, the arrest of the lawyers who tried to defend the independent journalists, the arrest of the lawyers who tried to defend the lawyers, the Leninism, they may have dropped Marxism, but they are a strongly Leninist state when it comes to one party control. And the alliance of that ideology with the [inaudible 00:09:30] for new technology, the geo-location and the face recognition that allows them to maintain this kind of panopticon state.
You see it most strongly, obviously, in Xinjiang with the way in which they spy on the Uyghur. When you watch the news, and you see those police roadblocks, you know what they're checking for at the roadblock is that you haven't tried to take the mandatory spyware off your phone. So everyone in that part of China has an app on their phone that tracks their antisocial behavior. What's antisocial behavior? Growing a beard, talking to foreigners, fasting during Ramadan, trying to access the wrong websites. If you do that too often, an algorithm marks you down for re-education without any human oversight. The only human involvement is when they come and arrest you, and put you in the camps. Now, it's not just that that model could easily be applied to the rest of China, it's that it could be exported. China could say to any friendly dictator around the world, here is a way for you not to have to worry about elections, and here is a way for us not to have to invest in anyone else. We will have a long-term relationship with you.
And that's why I see the current model of Chinese communism as the main civilizational rival to liberal democracy. By the way, I don't think this is, in any sense, rooted in Chinese culture or whatever. That is very easily demonstrated by looking at Taiwan. The Chinese people, given the right institutions, are as enterprising and freedom loving as anybody else, but they are held in a vice-like grip, and it's not at all clear to me how they can escape it, short of the fall of this regime in Beijing.

Andrew Roberts:
Do you fear they might invade Taiwan?

Daniel Hannan:
Well, one here's different things. I mean, yes, it would be crazy not to be prepared for that eventuality. You remember that Xi Jinping and Joe Biden had that bilateral conversation at the summit in San Francisco recently, and I was just struck by how different the two readouts of the two sides were. So the American readout was, "This is great. The Chinese have agreed to sign up to common projects on climate change, and AI, and all that." Which, great, all good stuff and re-establishing the hotline, and so forth. The Chinese take out on that meeting was, "We made it very clear that reunification is going to happen, and is going to happen now. Yes, we accept that you, Americans, have legitimate concerns about semiconductors. How long does it take you to establish an independent semiconductor capacity? Well, five years. All right, use them wisely, but understand that this is going to happen." So I think it would be very unwise not to be prepared for a kinetic war there.

Andrew Roberts:
Let's talk about another kinetic war, Ukraine, where, at the moment, at least, the Russians are undertaking pretty successful attacks in the north of the country. Where do you see this war progressing?

Daniel Hannan:
Well, again, I'm conscious that I'm talking to our foremost historian. So you will have seen, as I have, how many times parallels are drawn to the First World War. And, I think, with some justice in the sense that defensive technology is now hugely in advance of offensive technology. I mean, it's drones now rather than barbed wire and machine guns, but the same principle-

Andrew Roberts:
You do get the barbed wire and the-

Daniel Hannan:
You get the barbed wire, as well, right in there. And the pillboxes.

Andrew Roberts:
... [inaudible 00:12:58] as well, and the trenches, and so on. Yes.

Daniel Hannan:
You do. But the essential similarity is that it's an immense investment of offensive power for a very small gain. And I think that's true, but for that reason, let's follow through the parallel, because I think one can legitimately do it here. I don't think ... we all get obsessed with front lines. You've just said the Russians are advancing again in the north. Yes, they are. But I don't think the front lines are really determinative here, and I don't think they're even that important. This, it seems to me, is a war that is going to be determined by economic capacity, productive capacity, and staying power. And, in that sense, it very much resembles The Great War. Now, how did The Great War end?

Andrew Roberts:
Indeed, almost all wars. I mean, that ... the interest thing is-

Daniel Hannan:
All wars, but-

Andrew Roberts:
... the battle is not the key thing in war.

Daniel Hannan:
Exactly. And the maps are an immense distraction. Look at a map of Europe. When the armistice was signed in November 1918, Germany was still in possession of huge amounts of territory on both sides. What was the sequence that led to the defeat of Germany? They ran out of money, there was a mutiny, that Kaiser was forced to abdicate, and then they signed peace terms. Now, any route to a Ukrainian victory looks like that. It's not really about where the front lines have got to at any given moment.
Now, who has the advantage when it comes to productive capacity and, as you say, the key factor in all wars? Well, if it's Russia versus Ukraine, it's Russia. But if it's Russia versus the free world, it's Ukraine. Right? And I mean the people who I've listened to, and who I've found to be most correct about this in their ... security and military people. I think they're of the view that if Ukraine remains armed, if we continue to supply Ukrainians, then Russia will start to run out of resources badly during 2025. And by the end of 2025, we'll have to sue for peace. Therefore, of course, the Russian hope is that that aid will be cut off, and specifically will be cut off by an incoming US Administration.

Andrew Roberts:
And we are both Yankophiles. We are both believers in the special relationship. I notice it's being attacked a lot, at the moment, including in an article in the Financial Times, which I'm pleased to say attacked me, by name, as being a support of the special relationship.

Daniel Hannan:
Wonderful.

Andrew Roberts:
Exactly. I was thrilled by that.

Daniel Hannan:
Yeah, it's always exciting. It's a bit like ... have you been banned by Russia yet? I was hanging my head in shame. I was about the only parliamentarian who hadn't been sanctioned by the Kremlin. And people would come and say, "Have you been sanctioned, Hannan?" I'd sort of hang my head. Oh, no. I've only been banned from Belarus." "What?" So you cannot imagine how patriotic and happy I felt when I was finally banned, finally banned, after, to be fair to the Russians, after writing an article advocating the breakup of Russia into a number of different republics. So when they said I was actually existentially anti-Russian, they had a point.

Andrew Roberts:
Many congratulations.

Daniel Hannan:
Thank you.

Andrew Roberts:
So we come from a very, obviously, pro-American position, but I think we both feel that America could do better when it comes to the choice of their candidates for the presidential elections in November. How worried are you that President Trump will be so isolationist as to cut off help for Ukraine?

Daniel Hannan:
It is a worry, because he's highly unpredictable. But my bigger worry, actually, isn't even about any specific aspects of his or of Biden's putative foreign policy. It's about the whole process of US democracy. I mean, you and I are recording this podcast in the aftermath of the verdict, of the first of the anti-Trump cases. I looked at that, and I thought that both the defects of the court process itself, and the reaction to it, suggested a very dark place, because an open society rests on a series of norms and conventions and unspoken assumptions and precedents. For example, that the loser accepts the result, that the winner exercises some restraint, that you treat the other party as opponents, not as enemies, and that compromise is necessary in the name of national unity. It isn't a sign of being some pantywaist whip. Those things have ceased to apply.
You have one side resorting to lawfare, because they are seeking to win through the courts what they can't win at the ballot box. But also, you have the other side now showing absolutely no proportionality in how they refer to it. And to the Trump supporters listening to this podcast, I would just put one question in the aftermath of that case. Suppose you were to travel back in time, by a decade or so, and to say to your younger self, "Look, in 2024, you are going to be arguing that your guy, your Republican candidate, is absolutely within his rights to pay off a porn star, and then lie about it repeatedly provided that there is no technical violation of campaign finance law." I mean, what do you think your younger self would've said, right?
Ten years ago, this degree of polarization was hard to imagine, and I don't know where it's come from. It to do with ... is it the Jonathan Haidt thesis? Is it to do with smartphones? I don't know. But the norms on which liberal democracy must rest, above all, that there should be a penalty for being anti-democracy in a democracy, it should cost you something if you say, "The only way I lose is through fraud," which we're now going to get for the third time in a row. If those norms go, it's very difficult to see how a properly pluralist society can survive.

Andrew Roberts:
We don't have that, fortunately, in British politics. At least not yet.

Daniel Hannan:
No. We have plenty of other problems, but not that one.

Andrew Roberts:
But we have got major problems. And so, I'd like to look at what kind of problems you think we might be facing should the Labour Party win the next election. Obviously, neither of us hope that it will, but the [inaudible 00:19:12]-

Daniel Hannan:
Let's allow the possibility.

Andrew Roberts:
Let's allow the possibility. There's a chance-

Daniel Hannan:
Let's-

Andrew Roberts:
We reckon there might be a chance in a million.

Daniel Hannan:
Let's allow the hypothetical.

Andrew Roberts:
That's right. Exactly. Were that to happen, what do you think, not necessarily in chronological order, or in order of importance, but what jumps into your mind as a series of issues and problems that we're going to face?

Daniel Hannan:
There's one overwhelming one, which is that we're going to run out of money. We are already spending more than we can afford to, as a government, and there is no plan to do anything about that. Now, I could, in theory, make a case for a left of center government being able to enact reforms that a right of center party wouldn't be trusted to do. So you could, in theory, see a world in which a Labour government would reform our NHS behemoth, and bring it into line with the rest of the world, and have some kind of customer facing aspect to it. You could, in theory, see a Labour government tackling welfare without being accused of murdering the poor. You could, in theory, see them raising the pension age. In practice, I don't see them doing any of those things. And so, I think that the money will run out sooner or later and probably sooner.
And, at that point, people may understand that budgetary constraints are just a reflection of real life. They're not some wanton act of sadism by politicians who are trying to be mean to you, because I think that's where a lot of the country is post lockdown. That people saw such colossal sums of money being conjured into existence in the furlough scheme, and business subsidies, and so on, that everyone thinks that there's plenty of money left. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there really isn't. And this is the short explanation for why the Tories are so unpopular here. Every party that was in office when the bills came in for the lockdown tended to be unpopular. It's exaggerated when you've been in for 14 years. But the fundamental problem is people are not facing up to the cost of lockdown. If you pay people to stay home for the better part of two years, and you cover the difference by printing money, then you're going to have higher taxes and higher prices at the end of it.
And because the country as a whole, and the opposition parties, were all demanding an even longer and even stricter lockdown than we got, nobody really wants to admit that. Nobody wants to say that price rises and tax rises that I'm living through now are a consequence of the policy that I was shrilly demanding for two years. It's much more comforting to say, "Oh, it's the fault of those idiots in office," and it'll get much better when we replace the bad people with good people. Of course, all of the problems are still going to be there, and I think eventually the penny will drop in, and there'll be only one penny left to drop, by then, in our entire treasury. Eventually, people will understand that there are a number of things that we're paying for that we just cannot afford to carry on paying for.

Andrew Roberts:
You don't think they're just going to squeeze the rich. We're not going to have mansion taxes and various other wealth taxes.

Daniel Hannan:
That might keep the show on the road for a couple of years, but all it's doing is postponing the reckoning.

Andrew Roberts:
And what is the role of the Conservative Party, assuming there is still a Conservative Party in the House of Commons, there will be where we are in the House of Lords, but in the House of Commons, we've seen some pretty terrifying prognostications about how big it will be. What will the Conservative's role be? Will it be, primarily, to try to educate, in the way that Margaret Thatcher did back in the late 1970s, the electorate into recognizing that there's no magic money tree in the modern phrase?

Daniel Hannan:
Well, I think what educated the electorate in the late seventies was having the IMF bailout in 1976, and that's why Margaret Thatcher could say what she said and be believed, because people had seen with their own eyes that there was no money tree.

Andrew Roberts:
So do we need a bailout, IMF bailout?

Daniel Hannan:
I think it's very possible that we'll have something of that order or some kind of default or the bond market's freezing up or ... the old cliche that if something can't carry on forever, it doesn't, and we can't carry on spending money that we don't have. So what should the role of the Conservative Party be? Look, I think a Labour government, however huge its majority, may turn out to be quite short-lived. Normally, when you have-

Andrew Roberts:
In fact, the bigger the majority, the shorter it might be-

Daniel Hannan:
Very possibly.

Andrew Roberts:
... because of the quality of the people who will come in and the internal opposition, because people tend not to vote for split parties.

Daniel Hannan:
And the sense of dashed expectations. Because, as I said, an awful lot of people have convinced themselves that the only reason we have any problems in this country is that the people in power are bad people. It's the classic sort of fallacy. Instead of facing up to some of the trade-offs that a country has to face when we borrowed from our future selves to get through lockdown, it's much more comforting to say, "Oh, no, we just need good people there." And those people are going to be very quickly disappointed.
So I mean, again, you're the historian, you are the professional historian, but the parallel that people are drawing, they're saying this could be worse than '97. It could be the worst wipe out since 1906. Maybe, that's right. But, of course, the liberal government that came in 1906 did not remain popular for very long. It was a volatile time, and the country soon turned against it. And I don't think it is at all unlikely that something similar could happen. So the idea that the Tories should just dig in, and try a massive process of didactic kind of politics, and reeducating them, I just think that's a bit self-indulgent. I think we need to be ready for what may be an election well before the five years are over.

Andrew Roberts:
There's another aspect of it all, of course, isn't there, that people blame the Conservatives, or, at least, I don't think ordinary people do, but the establishment does, the newspapers do, and so on, the BBC does, blames Brexit. And to what extent do we, who supported Brexit, you and me and others, not stick up for it enough and argue that, actually, look at Germany, who we are doing better than, and Italy. We are level pegging with France. Was Brexit really this catastrophe that the Financial Times and the Guardian and the BBC and so on, try and make it out to be.

Daniel Hannan:
I mean, of course, it wasn't, and for the reason you've just given. Whether you count from the referendum in 2016, or whether you count from Brexit taking effect at the beginning of 2020, we have outperformed Western Europe. Now the other side falls back on, "Ah, yes, but we would have done even better if we ... " Well, I mean, I can't disprove that, but plainly it is not a catastrophe. Right? That said, and I think this is the reason why we don't stick up for it enough, I am disappointed by how slow we have been to take advantage of some of the opportunities that have opened up, specifically on deregulation and on trade. We have tended to leave in place almost all of the useless regulations we got from Brussels out of a combination of idleness and surreptitious civil service rejoinery. They are trying to hold the door ajar so that Labour can go back into some closer arrangement.
And when it comes to trade, I mean, yes, we've joined the CPTPP. That's significant. But we didn't even manage to significantly improve our terms of trade with the heroes of Vimy Ridge. We're the country as cuddly now as Canada. It wasn't at all cuddly at the time of Vimy Ridge, but a country ... and why didn't we? Because, fundamentally, we are determined to stick to EU standards on food, particularly on beef. Now, why are we doing that? I think we're doing that, because people would ... or the officials involved with it, still look forward to some eventual kind of agreement that would cover sanitary and phytosanitary standards, veterinary standards and food. But I have to ask, is it really sensible for us to have allowed our entire trade policy to have been dictated by a sector that accounts for less than half of 1% of our economy, i.e. Farming. This country got rich by not doing that, by happily importing its food, and moving up the production chain.

Andrew Roberts:
And what about the Australian free trade deal that we did?

Daniel Hannan:
I mean, much better than not having one, but it could have been way better had we been more ambitious. In particular, we could have been more ambitious on allowing free movement of labor, which brings us back to CANZUK. I would love to see those countries, which have comparably enough GDP that you're not going to have some massive flood of people one way or the other, and that, of course, have the same institutions, the same educational system, very interoperable regulatory systems, I would love to see a rule that, if you are offered a job in any of those countries, you can take it without needing a special visa.
Now, I'm not saying that that should bring rights of welfare claims or family reunification or anything like that, but that you should be allowed to go and work without needing to do any special paperwork. That's actually a hugely popular idea in all the CANZUK countries. All the polling shows that it's the most popular policy that could be feasibly implemented and hasn't been. Why wasn't it part of the trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand? Because of objections from the British Home Office. The other two countries were pushing for it, and we were the ones who said no.

Andrew Roberts:
You are one of, in my view, the two best orators in the House of Lords. The other one being Vernon Coaker, I think, the leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords. What do you think the House of Lords, the role of the House of Lords is going to be in the next Parliament after, say, this extraordinary event that might take place, which is the Labour Party winning the next election?

Daniel Hannan:
Yes. How is it that Gilbert and Sullivan define it? We do nothing in particular and do it very well. Is that a wonderful song?

Andrew Roberts:
Yes, yes, exactly.

Daniel Hannan:
Look, I mean, I think the cynical, but true, answer is that the fundamental role of the House of Lords, from the perspective of a Prime Minister, is that it is a place to send people that you want to get out of the way, and allure to incentivize good behavior from others. I don't think anyone would design a system like ours from first principles. It's very hard to justify. We're one of the two legislative chambers, and we're appointed by the executive. I mean, if that happened in Zimbabwe or somewhere, we'd all say, "Oh, this is a shocking and appalling autocratic government." So it's deeply unpopular to say this, but I'm actually in favor of a fundamental reform. And I'd have a Royal Commission. And I'd look at not just the role of the House of Lords, but all sorts of other anomalies that have crept into our system, the Supreme Court, asymmetries in the devolution settlement, more powerful local government. There's a lot of stuff that I think is worth looking at.

Andrew Roberts:
Big constitutional change. Do you-

Daniel Hannan:
I think we've got to the point where it's so lopsided that we actually need to look at some of these things, yes.

Andrew Roberts:
And will we get it from Labour?

Daniel Hannan:
No, I think there was a moment when they toyed with this idea. Gordon Brown had published a whole paper on having this upper house of regions and nations and so on, and then Keir Starmer realized that that would mean giving up a lot of patronage power. So my strong guess is that Labour will remain notionally committed to a deeper overhaul, but will not get around to it, at least, in its first term, if there is more than one term.

Andrew Roberts:
So no change really from 1899 when it first put to reform the House of Lords into it's first manifesto.

Daniel Hannan:
Exactly. And, indeed, from our point of view, no change since 1911 when we've been supposedly in this contingent and emergency situation.

Andrew Roberts:
Let's talk about Gaza. Can you see a meaningful ceasefire in Gaza whilst Hamas is still an operating and powerful military force there?

Daniel Hannan:
Oh, no. And I think that's a fairly widespread assumption, including in the Arab world. I think that-

Andrew Roberts:
No, but not in the White House. I mean, that's what they're trying to push for, isn't it?

Daniel Hannan:
No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that, realistically, any ceasefire, the best that Hamas gets out of it, the best they get out of it, is their lives and pretty uncomfortable lives. They're going to be hunted in exile. I don't think there is any viable solution where Hamas remains in Gaza. But I think Israel may have overemphasized going after Hamas personnel at the expense of going after Hamas ideology. I think Hamas, and its previous incarnations, so that view of sort of nihilistic bringing down the temple, which was in Gaza, actually, wasn't it? That was another ... I think it was in the city of Gath.

Andrew Roberts:
But with Samson and slaves or-

Daniel Hannan:
Exactly. But that readiness to bring everything crashing down, that is fed and watered by repeated defeats. The way Hamas see it, the defeat in the Suez War, which was, as largely fought, in Gaza, the '67 War, the intifada, all of these things bring the next bunch of kids in, because they've been orphaned or they've seen their parents' generation defeated and humiliated, and so they can absorb a lot of defeat. And it seems to me that we have to break that cycle. And breaking that cycle means, fundamentally, reeducating the population there, so that a different narrative comes to the fore. Now, this happened in Japan, and Germany, and so on, after 1945, and it involved some ... it involved an occupying power, seizing complete control, the judiciary, the police, and all the rest of it.

Andrew Roberts:
And the schools.

Daniel Hannan:
And the schools, and marching people into cinemas and making them ... confronting them with the evidence of the war crimes and so on. Now, obviously, that can't be done by us or Israel, but I think there is, at least, a realistic scenario. I don't say it's a likely one, but it's a plausible scenario, where some coalition of Arab countries could assume elements of the administration in Gaza through some proxies who are not Hamas. So as far as I understand it, although the sovereignty of Gaza, in practice, has moved a great deal over the years, it's been under Egyptian, Israeli, Palestinian, whatever, the actual officials, generally, are all local. And it's a question of what instructions are they given and by whom.
Now, at the moment, that has broken down badly. Combination of UNRWA and Hamas mean that cronies of the worst terrorist families are given the cushy jobs, and a version of history, and a version of politics is taught that would make anyone think, "We can't live next to this terrible colonialist oppressor." Somebody else needs to be brought in. And by the way, that means getting rid of UNRWA. I don't see how, after what's happened with UNRWA personnel being involved in some of the attacks, including in the attack on the 7th of October, I don't see how we can leave in place a UN agency whose fundamental premise is that refugee status is inherited, and that therefore their job will only be done when somehow all of these Gazans go to houses in Israel on which they've never set eyes after four generations. So we need a completely different model for Gaza, and possibly also for the West Bank, when this is done.
But at the end of it ... I mean, this shouldn't be all stick. At the end of it, there should be a path to recognition and statehood. And not just statehood, but imagine a world in which you had a viable property based government in Gaza instead of the terrorist habitat we've created there now. Imagine that you had a sort of bourgeoisie there who would want to stay on good terms with their customers? Where are their customers going to be? 90% are going to be in Israel. They will be your first line of defense against freelance young men firing rockets off their property and attracting retaliation. So the challenge is how do we get there? And that's why, I think, we need some kind of international coalition to reassure Israel that their security will be safeguarded while this process of political and educational reform is carried out over maybe a decade or more.

Andrew Roberts:
And on that optimistic note, I'm going to ask you what history book or biography you're reading at the moment.

Daniel Hannan:
So I, actually, I brought it along, because I was reading it on the train. I'm reading this biography of Bolivar by somebody called Marie Arana, who is a American Peruvian. And it's a wonderful book, which I'd recommend, genuinely, is a book that I'm reading at the moment. If I were reading a bad book, I'd come and say that. And she's been dealt a very strong hand in terms of the material. I mean, he's a very colorful character, and also a very consequential character.
I was trying to think if there's anyone else in the world who has two countries named after him. Because, of course, as well as Bolivia, the obvious one, his native Venezuela is now the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. And it's an adventure story, it is a romance. Fascinating life he had. But also, it's always interested me, as I know it has you. Why did South America not develop like North America? When it had greater resources, when Spain had vastly greater resources than England, why has no Mexican politician ever had to propose building a wall to keep the gringos out? And-

Andrew Roberts:
And also, and Argentina in the late 1970s, had a massive GDP.

Daniel Hannan:
1870s.

Andrew Roberts:
1870s.

Daniel Hannan:
Yes.

Andrew Roberts:
In the 19th century.

Daniel Hannan:
Yes. Between 1916 and Javier Milei, they did not have any recognized leader or government. And it's amazing how long you can cruise. I mean, it took them 50 years to run out of the accumulated capital from pre-1916. To me, it's just a really interesting question. Most of these countries in Latin America, consciously, copied the US Constitution, modeled themselves on it, and they thought they were doing something similar. Bolivar, himself, and his followers were very much children of the Western Enlightenment. They were inspired by the French philosophe. They were Freemasons, in many cases. They saw themselves as breaking with superstition, and all that. And yet, unlike the US, most Central and South American countries have lurched from one dictatorship and one revolution to another.
They have ... a lovely phrase that a Peruvian columnist, a friend of mine uses, [foreign language 00:39:14]. They have disposable constitutions. And that's a big part of the problem. They never formed the culture of accepting that process matters more than outcome, and that you should be loyal to the rules rather than to your faction. And this is all a roundabout way back to our earlier conversation. You see, my assumption, when I was younger, was that eventually South Americans would get the hang of what the US and Canada do well, and would copy it. I'm now much more worried that the US is the exception, and that the US is in the contingent [inaudible 00:39:46] for the US to become like Guatemala or somewhere, where it's expected that a president is jailed by his success at the moment he leaves office.

Andrew Roberts:
Actually, it's very interesting you should mention Bolivar, because he was also ... a biography of him, was also chosen by the president Ivan Duque when he came on my show, one of the four heads of state and heads of governments who have come on the Secrets of Statecraft. Tell me about your counterfactual, your what if.

Daniel Hannan:
Because it could so very nearly have happened, what if home rule for Ireland had been agreed before the First World War? Or what if the British authorities had not responded in the heavy handed way that they did to the 1916 rising? There's always this inevitability that is read backwards into events, this very poor teleological history. But I think that the Republican surge happened by the merest chance. But one of my favorite statistics is that three times as many southern Irish Catholics died in British uniform in three days of the Somme offensive, from the 16th Irish regiment, as participated in the Easter Rising.

Andrew Roberts:
Yes.

Daniel Hannan:
I mean, most historians estimate that it was between 1,000 and 1,400 people. And that the joke at the time was people would claim that they were out when they were actually out buying stamps at the GPO, and would then later claim to be have been part of it. But it was a tiny fringe movement by theatrical young men, some of them, literally, wearing theatrical props at the time. George Bernard Shaw said afterwards, "All they needed to do was starve out that microcosmic republic until it was made ridiculous." He said, "But what, actually, happened would be unbelievable were there not so many witnesses." And, of course, we know what happened. The leaders were taken out and shot in batches, which led to a swing in sympathy to them, and therefore, by extension, to their cause. So that at the 1918 election, republicanism, as in total separation rather than home rule, which had been a tiny fringe position, less than 5% previously, swept the board.
Now, what my counterfactual would be, what if, instead, Ireland had evolved towards ever greater autonomy in the way that, say, New Zealand did. Similar sort of population. If it had become ... I mean, maybe not quite like New Zealand, because geography would have meant a slightly different relationship in terms of foreign policy and so on. But the basic idea of a peaceful evolution to greater autonomy, that the blood-dimmed tide need not have been loosed. Because what happened after independence is we had two monstrous civil wars. There was a brief and intense one south of the border, and then a sporadic and protracted one in Northern Ireland. And all of that, so three wars in total, those two civil wars plus the War of Independence itself, might have all been avoided had there been some home rule.

Andrew Roberts:
And there were three opportunities, weren't there, in the first bill in 1886, second bill in 1893, third bill in 1912. So it wasn't as though we weren't spoiled for choice when it came to [inaudible 00:43:13].

Daniel Hannan:
I'm afraid our direct predecessors, i.e. Tory Peers, did not cover themselves with glory during those home rule attempts. But I just keep coming back, with terrible poignancy, to Yeats's question, "Was it needless death after all?" And the horrible thing is, I think it was. It could have so easily been avoided.

Andrew Roberts:
And, of course, had it happened, we would be talking about CANZUKI rather than CANZUK.

Daniel Hannan:
Yes, exactly. And, of course, Ireland, the paradox is so much more closely linked to all of those other CANZUK countries than it is to the EU, in its culture, in its family, in its language, everything. Although it's politically correct to pretend, if you're a Dublin politician, that actually we're really just like the Finns or the Bulgarians. But, I mean, I don't think anyone really believes that. By the way, a similar counterfactual, a similar decolonial, one that I've always thought was interesting is, again, our predecessors, our Conservative House of Lords predecessors really balls this one up. But what if Pitt the Elder's plan for the conciliation of the American colonists had gone through, effectively recognizing the continental Congress as an American parliament under the Crown? And Madison said afterwards that, yeah, we'd have taken that with both hands. And again, it's interesting to speculate about would the US now, effectively, be a kind of Canada? Would it be a-

Andrew Roberts:
No. It would be a reverse takeover and we would be the 52nd.-

Daniel Hannan:
Yes. That's my view.

Andrew Roberts:
Maybe the 52nd to the 60th state.

Daniel Hannan:
Well, I don't think we'd be the 52nd state, but I do think ... I mean, Adam Smith wrote this just before the revolution. He said that such is the direction of migration that, A, we're going to have to decentralize, but, B, the federal capital is going to have to be in North America.

Andrew Roberts:
The first person to migrate should have been George III, of course, gone off to New York and reestablish. I mean, his family had only been in Britain for 50 years before that anyhow.

Daniel Hannan:
Yes, exactly.

Andrew Roberts:
So it's not as though they're uprooting themselves, really.

Daniel Hannan:
Isn't it, by the way, fascinating. I mean, I very much enjoyed your biography of George III, but I think our royal family, a large part of its appeal rests, if I can say this without lese majeste, in its Philistinism. We don't want intellectuals.

Andrew Roberts:
No. Laughing at T.S. Eliot. The king [inaudible 00:45:37] laughing at-

Daniel Hannan:
One of my favorite stories. The king and the queen mother getting the giggles as he read The Waste Land. One of my favorite. Or already his father, George V, being shown an exhibition of impressionist art, and bellowing to his wife, "Come and have a look at this, May, this will make you laugh." I love those things. Or indeed, the fact that the late queen mother referred to her dying day, to her son-in-law, as the Hun. I mean, this is exactly what you want for, if you like, an institution whose only role is to be a backstop referee in the event of a contested election. So you mustn't have someone who you suspect of political leanings, and therefore, to be safe, you shouldn't suspect them of any intellectual interest at all.
And I have to say they've played that absolutely beautifully. And looking at what's happening in the US, I wonder whether the hysterical all-or-nothing sense that it would be cataclysmic if the other side wins anything. Why is that such a strong feeling in the US but not in Canada? Maybe because there's this backstop. I mean, George III was precisely such a sort of dull, decent, dutiful, non-intellectual, but not stupid man. Isn't it, in retrospect, extraordinary that so many people, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the 1760s were convinced that he was bent on creating some kind of medieval autocracy. I mean, that was your sort of-

Andrew Roberts:
Conspiracy theory.

Daniel Hannan:
It really was. That was your chem trails, and your WEF conspiracy theory of its day, wasn't it?

Andrew Roberts:
Oh, undoubtedly. They believed that he wanted to bring in Catholicism, because there was a bill, the Quebec Act of 1774, that did nothing, but give the poor old French Catholics the right to religious freedom.

Daniel Hannan:
Yeah. And this is by the way, actually, referred to in the Declaration of Independence. This is not some ... it is as though QAnon were referred to in a party manifesto. No, it became the completely ... yeah.

Andrew Roberts:
Extraordinary thing. Dan Hannan, Lord Hannan, thank you very much, indeed, for coming on Secrets of Statecraft.

Daniel Hannan:
Such a pleasure, Andrew. Keep up the good work.

Andrew Roberts:
Thank you, Dan. On my next Secrets of Statecraft, we'll be joined by Lord True. Up until the last election earlier this month, Nick True was the leader of the House of Lords, and he has some fascinating views on the past, present, and future of conservatism.

Speaker 3:
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