Britannia Radio

Why has Daniel Hannan become an internet sensation?

MEP's tirade against Gordon Brown is top of YouTube's most viewed

Daniel Hannan slagging off Gordon Brown? I'm afraid that when I first saw that there was some YouTube video around of Hannan's anti-Brown rant at the European parliament on Tuesday, I couldn't be bothered to watch it. I used to work with Hannan at the Daily Telegraph and I like him. He's not exactly a Guardian-reading progressive, but he's very intelligent, he's up for an argument and he's got strong beliefs (which is less common than you'd think in politics). Hannan making a speech in praise of Brown might have aroused my interest. But this one? It sounded utterly predictable.

It turned out that I missed a sensation. When I last looked, Hannan's speech was still at the top of YouTube's "most viewed" section, with 712,860 "hits". It's been described as "the most viewed political speech in the fastest time in internet history". The speech was picked up in the US, where it has featured on the Drudge Report, Fox News and the Rush Limbaugh Show among other places, and it has clearly struck a chord with the American right. "Republicans in Washington could take a lesson from the bravery of this man," Limbaugh said on his show.

Hannan has written a post on his blog trying to explain why his speech became such a hit without any coverage in the mainstream media and he makes a good point about the way political communication is changing.

The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what's news. The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day's headlines, are over. Now, a thousand bloggers decide for themselves what is interesting. If enough of them are tickled then, bingo, you're news.

Breaking the press monopoly is one thing. But the internet has also broken the political monopoly. Ten or even five years ago, when the minister for widgets put out a press release, the mere fact of his position guaranteed a measure of coverage. Nowadays, a politician must compel attention by virtue of what he is saying, not his position. It's all a bit unsettling for professional journalists and politicians. But it's good news for libertarians of every stripe.

But this does not fully answer the question. Why did this speech take off? Hannan himself admits to being "slightly perplexed" because he's been making similar speeches for years. Having listened to it a couple of times, and read the text, I don't think it's a great speech (and some of the arguments are relatively easy to dismantle, as Sunny Hundal andSunder Katwala have demonstrated). But it's much clearer and more concise than the speeches normally delivered in Congress or at Westminster. And, at three minutes long, it's just the right length for YouTube.

MEPs in the European parliament are sometimes only allowed to speak for one minute. They don't get heckled, in the way that MPs do at Westminster, and they don't have to use any of the archaic language about "honourable friends" etc. This makes the place quite soulless. But it also makes it much better for YouTube. Hannan's the last person I would expect to applaud European parliamentary procedure, but he should; it's one factor, I think, that has helped to make him an internet star.