Hannan to launch “British tea party movement”

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Right wing Tory MEP Daniel Hannan is to launch a British equivalent of the tea party movement in America this Saturday at a rally in Brighton, to campaign against the taxes that pay for our schools, hospitals, roads and police.

Hannan is the Conservative MEP who called the NHS a “60 year mistake“, and a “conspiracy” prompting the fierce backlash We Love the NHS campaign last summer.

He was slammed last week by an international Georgian group for his “fantasy” economics.

He also said in the European Parliament recently that:

“if Baroness Ashton…had her way, Europeans would still live under Marxist tyranny.”

As Sunder Katwala at Next Left writes:

“And so the battle to be Britain’s Sarah Palin is joined in earnest with Hannan moving decisively to rein in the early lead taken by The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson and ConservativeHome’s Tim Montgomerie. Might it be time for a British Palinwatch on the political blogosphere to help keep score?”

Political Scrapbook has already started keeping tabs on what’s certain to throw more heat than light on the state of public finances and public service provision in this country, with a Palin-o-meter, right, to show just how wacky the right’s view are.

While a British tea party movement might all seem like a daft idea now, it does highlight the need for the left to create more of a movement culture around its own principles, with more rebuttal projects, campaign groups and a stronger, pluralist institutional and organisational infrastructure of its own.

That said, check out some of the comments below Daniel Hannan’s call to arms. A rabid British tea party movement could have some disastrous knock on effects for the perception of the Tory party ahead of the election.

Watch this space…