Overview
This week, we go back in time to October 9, 2014, and the Acton Institute’s 24th annual dinner for this speech from Daniel Hannan.
Hannan is a British writer, journalist, and politician. He served as a Member of the European Parliament representing South East England from 1999 through 2020, standing down from the EU Parliament upon in the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU in 20202, for which Hannan was a lead campaigner.
Hannan first rose to international prominence in 2009 when a video of a short speech he delivered to the EU Parliament when viral. In the speech, Hannan strongly criticized then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his response to the 2008 global financial crisis, calling him the “the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.”
In his address to our 2014 Annual Dinner, Hannan stressed the importance of not taking for granted the sublime inheritance of our liberal democratic systems of governance, and the importance of defending that heritage with a sense of optimism and confidence in what is good about the way we do things.
