Plenary Apoplexy: The Top 10 British MEP moments
As British MEPs appear for the last time in Brussels, we look back at the best interventions made by UK politicians on the European stage. Ranging from outrageous perorations to witty ripostes, here’s my list of the top 10 contributions by Brits in the European Parliament, based on sheer jaw-droppery.
10.) Dan Hannan (ECR, Conservative Party) “Golf Handicaps”
What started with a debate on whether MEPs could allow vulnerable elderly people to receive social care in another EU country, ended with anarcho-liberalist, Dan Hannan, arguing that MEPs should be lazy and that the world would be a better place if MEPs stopped meddling in other people lives and “worked on their golf handicaps or read a novel instead”.
9.) Nigel Farage (EFDD, UK Independence Party) “None of you have ever had a proper job in your lives”
A triumphant Farage returning to an ‘emergency’ plenary session in Brussels following the June 2016 referendum. After insulting everyone in the room, he calls for a ‘grown-up’ approach in cutting a tariff-free deal with the EU.
In the top right at 02:20, Lithuanian Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, the former heart surgeon born in a Siberian Gulag, looks like he just can’t take it anymore.
8.) Alyn Smith (Greens/EFA, Scottish National Party) “Do not let Scotland down!”
In the same post-referendum plenary session, the SNP frontman urges the Parliament, in his characteristic Braveheart fashion, not to let Scotland down.
7.) Godfrey Bloom (EFDD, UK Independence Party) “Ein Volk…”
How different things would have been if Martin Shultz hadn’t undergone a disastrous election campaign in 2017 in bidding to replace Merkel as Chancellor. Still, if he ever felt too big for his boots, there was always swordsman extraordinaire, Godfrey Bloom, to cut him down to size by calling him a ‘fascist’.
6.) Anne Widecombe (Non-attached, The Brexit Party) “Slaves against their owners”
Like David Cameron, the former Strictly Come Dancing star said in her previous life as a Conservative Minister that the party “shouldn’t get bogged down in Europe”. Here she is, rebooted and ready to take on Europe — by comparing the UK’s membership of the EU to that of slavery.
5.) Syed Kamall (ECR, Conservative Party) “Nazis were Socialists”
Poor Syed. Head of the ECR Group and the most senior elected Muslim politician in Brussels. Widely seen as a cool customer to maintain just a modicum of respectability for British Conservatives in Europe as the clock wound down to Brexit-day. Kamall had shown that Brits were reasonable, and that Brexit was by no means a rejection of Europe’s culture and values.
But he lost his cool just before the end, where in almost the last plenary speech he ever made, completely unprovoked, he took leave of his senses by claiming that socialists and Nazis “want the same thing”.
4.) Molly Scott-Cato (Greens/EFA, UK Green Party) “I was and remain a professor of Economics”
When asked by Brexit Party MEP, Roberts Rowland, as to why she thought the end of the transition period will take Britain off a cliff, when she doesn’t have any degree in economics, the veteran Green MEP dutifully reminded him that she is in fact an Economics professor.
3.) Dan Hannan (ECR, Conservative Party) “The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government”
Not everyone gets to call the PM a “Brezhnev-era apparatchik” to his face. But there is, of course, another Mr Brexit who had been a constant thorn in the EU’s side for decades. Elected in 1999, Hannan finally got the chance 10 years later to stick it to a Labour Government with his mellifluous diction, laced with acidic barbs in attacking Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
2.) Martina Anderson (GUE/NGL, Sinn Fein) “Stick your border where the sun doesn’t shine”
Far be it for any journalist to assume that a politician had been drinking before giving a speech, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Martina had a cheeky visit to the MEPs bar before turning up in plenary to deliver her own ‘alternative arrangements’ to the Northern Ireland border issue.
1.) Nigel Farage (EFDD, UK Independence Party) “Charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk”
“Who are you?!” Newly elected European Council President, Herman van Rompuy, can be seen gasping for air during a prolific onslaught by Farage.
Whatever can be said of his brand of callous, vitriolic, anti-immigrant populism, Farage has made the biggest impact on British politics since arguably Churchill. By posing to the EU institutions the existential questions that needed to be answered, crucially around questions of transparency and democratic accountability, he has had an unbelievably transformative effect on the post-WWII rules-based order across Europe.
Yes, in 20 years he only attended one committee meeting, and routinely made plenary speeches that had nothing to do with the debate at hand, followed by a quick swivel, leaving the chamber, and the UKIP press team immediately uploading the videos on YouTube.
Problem was, as a great orator, the videos went viral and everybody listened.
P.S. Bonus track:
Although not really a speech, Labour MEP Seb Dance shot to fame after sitting behind Farage with this banner.
P.P.S. Bonus GIF:
Syed Kamall’s diplomatic response to Guy Verhofstadt on the merits of further European integration
