On Friday 30th January, more than thirty students and visitors attended a discussion with Daniel Hannan, Conservative Member of the European Parliament for South East England, after a short talk about his latest book entitled The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain.

The event was organised by the Conservative Party Society. Tim Aker, Grassroots Coordinator for the Tax Payers’ Alliance, and Councillor Jeremy Moulton, Conservative Local Parliamentary Candidate, also delivered short speeches.

Dubbed as ‘most dangerous man in Europe’ due to his staunch opposition to the very institution he serves, Hannan has consistently argued that centralised, supra-national institutions like the EU inevitably undermine national political sovereignty and deprive British citizens of their democratic power. In other words, Hannan argues that unelected state institutions have superseded their responsibilities and have made democratically elected politicians practically powerless. This, he argues, has led to the British public’s general distrust of politics and low turn-out at elections.

As is outlined in his recent book, Hannan proposes a rejuvenation of the British Parliamentary model of representative democracy, through a series of devolutionary measures. Centralised bureaucratic structures should be dismantled and power should be redistributed from Whitehall to local councils.

Further measures, including elections for high ranking police officers and civil servants, would re-engage the electorate, according to Hannan, thereby ensuring Britain upholds its unique democratic heritage – before it is lost forever.

In this exclusive interview, Daniel Hannan discusses Top-Up Fees, the Soviet Union and the marketisation of primary education.

The really critical one is fiscal devolution. In other words, making local councils raise their own money. Until you have that, it doesn’t really make any difference what other powers you give them. Once you have that, a lot would follow: local control of policing, local control of welfare. It’s all really about the money.

It’s the single biggest problem. Really important decisions - I mean, life and death situations, literally – are made by people that are not answerable. In the case of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, or whatever. And its not that they’re filled with bad people at all; its just that it is not enough for somebody to think he knows what he’s doing and to be benign, to mean well, if everybody else doesn’t have a way of making him do what they want.

I mean for hundreds of years Britain was run on the basis that Kings and Bishops and so on just had direct authority and everyone else had to put up with it. The last 400 years has been the story of how we got away from that and introduced the principle that our rulers were accountable to the rest of us, and its amazing that we’re now giving up on it.

I think the comparison was a very specific one: it wasn’t saying that we’re living in the Soviet Union, I’m obviously not saying that. But it’s amazing that the apathy and cynicism and fatalism that people feel here recalls the attitudes that people had in undemocratic societies, and that’s shocking, because you’d think: "Well hang on, Britain’s a parliamentary democracy so why do people talk about their politicians the same way as people did in the Soviet Union?" And the answer is: because to all intents and purposes, they might as well be in a system where how they vote doesn’t matter.

So the Soviet Union had regular elections but everyone knew that it didn’t change anything. And although its not the same as that, people nonetheless feel that their vote has lost its potency and that whoever’s name they put their cross next to, nothing changes. So that has led to them being angry and cynical in the way people were in the old communist system.

I’m against it on both levels [in principle and in practice]. It’s about the relationship between the Citizen and the State. I hate the idea that I could be minding my own business, not committing any crime, walking down the street as a free born Englishman and some state official can say: "Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here", and I just can’t say "Mind your own business." It may sound like a silly point, but once you lose that you become a very different country.

So of course I’m against getting it through the backdoor as a part of a European identity card. The driving licence has been Europeanised so they’ve got something that is a proto-identity card if they need it. And once they start putting more and more information on that, there will be the possibility that it comes in by the backdoor because people will say; "Well hang on, we’ve basically already got it, its too late."

I’ve seen that happen so often with the EU. A proposal goes from unthinkable to inevitable without any intervening stage.

What is your stance on the issue of University Top-Fees?

I am a localist so I think it should be for every university to decide. I am against the current system because it isn’t really a form of fees at all, it’s a tax on graduates. If you think about it, there’s no link between the revenue raised by tuition fees and the tuition provided by the university at all. It’s an arbitrary figure set by central government, then repaid once you’ve left. So it is just an additional way of raising revenue out of people. It’s another tax - it’s a tax on people who have been to university.

I’ve got no problem with an individual university saying; "This is what we’re going to charge you and this is why we reckon its worth it". And then you shop around and decide "Yes, I think this is worth it. If I go there I’ll be able to get a better job" – that’s fine. But the current system isn’t about that at all: it’s about getting more money out of people through yet another state agency.

It couldn’t fail to improve where we are now. We have some really appalling outcomes in some classes.

I mean, what’s the argument against letting people choose? You very rarely get this put into words, but the real argument against - the reason it doesn’t happen and why Labour is against it - is because they say; "Some parents wouldn’t know what to do. And so it would be alright for the children of the articulate middle-classes but it would be really unfair for everybody else. That’s basically their argument. They can’t actually come out and say that people are stupid, so they don’t verbalise it. But that’s why they’re against it. Apart from being patronising, that’s just wrong.

At the moment you have incredible disparities of outcome and you have disparities of outcome based basically on where your parents live, especially in cities. The contrast between the best schools and the worst schools in London is vast. You’re twice as likely to get five or more GCSEs at one of the schools in the top 20% of local education authorities, as in one at the bottom 20%. That’s happening now. That’s incredible.

I don’t see how you could have anything worse than that. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be some better schools and some worse schools, because, you know, we’re human beings, there is no system where that doesn’t happen. But at least you’d have a choice over it.

At the moment - however bad a school is - it basically almost never closes. It can happen, but it is very, very rare for a state school to close, however poor its results are. Obviously nobody wants a school to close. But it’s better for it to close and its premises to be taken over by somebody else who can do better, than for it to remain open providing a bad service and diminishing the life chances of people passing through it.

It will be one day. Some of it will be by the next Conservative government. The thing on police, they’ve already accepted. The thing on parliamentary appointments instead of executive appointments, they’ve accepted. They are inching their way towards more power for local councils and welfare reform. But the one where I’m most encouraged is on education – discussions about creating first-class independent schools within the state sector. Brilliant. That will transform how kids are taught in the future. It would raise standards so quickly without costing a penny.