The gusts and gales of autumn are sadly approaching, but there may still be a handful of golden evenings and gilded weekends yet to come. So perhaps there’s still time to add another volume to the summer reading list for tardy deck chair sizzlers and bronzers.
Dan Hannan is a Conservative MEP and broadsheet commentator with a flair for the English language matched by few modern politicians. His latest volume, A Doomed Marriage: Britain and Europe (Notting Hill Editions) offers a stylistic treat.
The author has a remarkable ability in real life to be able to cast a relevant Shakespeare quote at you to enrich a conversation on dredging. Our attention is kept rapt as we are walked through the lot of “Greek and Italian premiers who inadvertently stumbled into the path of the EU’s combined harvester”. We happily follow with grim intent the detail on how the EU “fire hoses cash at its dependent NGOs”. The style is a delight to follow, especially when perforated with astute and novel quotes, such as that borrowed from Upton Sinclair on how when dealing with the self-interested of his own day, “It is remarkably difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
The main premise of the volume can perhaps be summed up in a single and astute question: “Ask yourself this,” challenges the author. “If Britain were not already a member of the European Union […] would either of the two main parties now be arguing that we ought to join?” It is a critical question. Mr Hannan observes, for instances, that the terms for the British taxpayer arranged by Ted Heath were so bad that accession was no negotiating triumph. Indeed, while some commentators today complain of Britain having ‘missed a boat’ by not joining earlier, given those terrible terms this country could have acceded at any time: a more appropriate metaphor we suggest in turn might be of stumping up a first class ticket to end up in steerage.
The author dissects the mythology surrounding the EU: what the EU is supposedly for; what it’s meant to fight against; what it’s supposed to represent; what it’s meant to achieve, and to have achieved; and where we are meant to end up. A section exploring the “tyranny of the status quo”, Milton Friedman’s succinct and biting critique of mired government, tears into the Euroclique so devastatingly that you are left wondering if the optimal readership for this volume mightn’t be the subjects of the criticism themselves. It should be required reading for the concours for budding Eurocrats.
The book’s well-written and a pleasure to read, and even if you are familiar with the subject matter the arguments are set out persuasively, clearly, and concisely. If we have a regret it’s that it is too concise. This volume reminds us of the eighteenth century heyday of political essays rather than the chunky tomes of the twentieth century, a rapier swipe rather than a cricket bat clubbing. But if you’re after wordplay over wordage, this is for you.
