Conservative vs. Conservative - in Britain...

Forget in-fighting, in the U.K. they have right of centre parties fighting each other.

What exactly is happening in Britain right now?

That was the essence of the question I wanted to as my old friend Daniell Hannan, now known as Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, for this week’s Full Comment Podcast.

Daniel was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 until 2020 where he fought for Britain’s rights inside the EuroZone. He was also a key advocate for Brexit and maintains to this day, rightly in my view, that Brexit was beneficial to the U.K.

We talk about that a bit in the episode, which you can catch in full below. You can also watch the speech from 17 years ago that put him on my radar - it’s a short three minute blast against former British PM Gordon Brown.

What people who don’t know Daniel don’t realize though is that the is an astute observer of Canadian politics. He has watched as Britain’s conservative movement has fallen into the same split as Canada’s did back in the 1990s.

Daniel is friends with every leader of Canada’s modern Conservative Party and a great admirer of Preston Manning.

Here’s a video clip from part of our longer conversation where we focus on what Britain’s conservative parties could learn from the Canadian experience.

I’ll bring you more clips from my chat with Daniel over the coming weeks and try to have him on more often.

What exactly is happening in Britain…

They’ve had seven PM’s in 10 years. As I ask Daniel off the top, is Britain the new Italy?

Here is the full episode of our chat on Full Comment.

A devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government…

Hard to believe it’s been 17 years since this speech. I’ll claim that neither Daniel nor I have aged in that time, but you all have eyes.

Watch as he skewers Gordon Brown with ease in three minutes.