Q&A with Daniel Hannan: true conservatism and Roger Scruton

Home News Q&A with Daniel Hannan: true conservatism and Roger Scruton

Daniel Hannan is a British politician, journalist and author. He is a member of the European Parliament, representing South East England for the Conservative Party. He also serves as the Secretary-General of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists. The Collegian caught up with him at CPAC to talk about conservatism in the West.

What gives you hope and what is discouraging to you about the state of the American political system?

Well the system itself is based around the constraint of government in a way that almost no other system in the world is. And that goes right back to the Constitution. The Constitution has done precisely what its authors intended in Philadelphia. It’s served to keep the government small and the citizen free. But that’s the basis of American exceptionalism. Don’t imagine that it’s some intrinsic, inherited optimism in the people or some genetic quality. The reason that this country has been prosperous and successful and independent is because the structures that were designed by the founders were conceived with that objective. And if you change those structures, and if you expand the government, and you go down this European road toward more regulation and higher tax and more dependency, you see how very quickly Americans will start behaving like Greeks, and start protesting about every inherited entitlement that they think is theirs by some kind of divine right. It can happen very quickly. Don’t imagine that there’s some law of nature that means it won’t happen here.

 

What things can young conservatives do to become better advocates for their beliefs?

The first thing is not to worry about what your audience might think. First of all, it fails in its own terms, because you come across as less than straightforward, less than frank.

Secondly, why are you in politics if not to try and change minds?  I think that a widespread critique of elected representatives in your country and in mine and everywhere else is, “They’re hedging, they’re trimming, they’re not saying what they really think, they’re dodging the question, they’re waiting for public opinion and then they’re coming in behind it.” For a lot of people that is a valid criticism of what they do. I think it serves to diminish the confidence people feel in their representative institutions, but it also means that the person doing it is going to be much less happy in politics.

Speak your mind — it doesn’t matter if people disagree. If they disagree but they know that you mean it, they’ll respect you. There’s nothing worse than hedging and being cautious and not opening your mouth until everybody else has.

 

What is the root of your conservatism?

Conservatism isn’t really a terribly ideological thing. It’s more an instinct than an ideology — or at least an amalgam of instincts. I am a quite unusual conservative in that I tend to read these books by the Hayeks and the Rothbards and so on. My wife is a much better conservative than I am, because she’s an un-ideological one, and for her conservatism is a series of attitudes: distrust of government officials, patriotism, unflashy religious faith. Precisely because she’s not political she’s therefore a proper conservative. I remember when I was 15 — this was really a great moment in my political development — there is a conservative philosopher in the UK called Roger Scruton, very brilliant man, incredibly intelligent, and he came to speak to the philosophy society at my school. And I asked him, “What’s the role of a conservative thinker?” And he replied, “The role of a conservative thinker is to reassure the people that their prejudices are true.” What a great definition, right? On most issues, people have got it right and their governments have got it wrong. People were against the bailout, people were against these tax rises, people are against mass immigration, and people are against giving up their sovereignty. It’s a clack of politicians who have inflicted these things. And so the role of the conservative politician is to make sure that public opinion rules the polity, and that the elected representatives remember that they are representatives and not rulers.

 

Wasn’t it Edmund Burke who said, “The individual is foolish but the species is wise”?

Edmund Burke actually put it really beautifully in his “Reflections on the French Revolution.” In one of the most powerful metaphors in all of political philosophy, where he said: “Because half a dozen crickets concealed beneath the fern make the field ring with their importunate chink while thousands of cattle take their repose in the shade of the mighty oak and chew their cud in silence, pray do not imagine that those who make all the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.” Is there a better analysis of our present discontent than that? We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in if public opinion four years ago had prevented these massive taxpayer rescues of failed private institutions. That was something that all the political parties, all the media elites all rushed to say that we desperately needed, to pump in this public money into the banks. Had there been a referendum in your country or in mine or anywhere else it would never have happened and we wouldn’t now be facing the debt crisis that we have.

 

News Editor Patrick Timmis contributed to this report.