Daniel John Hannan (born 1 September 1971) is a British writer, journalist and politician. He is the founding President of the Initiative for Free Trade and was a Conservative Member of the European Parliament for South East England from 1999 until the United Kingdom's exit from the EU in 2020.
He writes regular columns for The Sunday Telegraph, the International Business Times, ConservativeHome and the Washington Examiner as well as occasional columns in the Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, The Spectator and the Wall Street Journal. He is editor-in-chief of The Conservative, a quarterly journal of centre-right political thought. He has published several books.
He was the first Secretary-General of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE), serving from 2009 to 2018. He was one of the founders of Vote Leave, one of the organisations that campaigned to leave the EU in 2016, and served on its board throughout the referendum, in which he played a prominent role, participating in a number of public debates.
Hannan was born in Lima, Peru. His mother was a Scot who had been working in the British Embassy in Lima. His father, whose family origins are Ulster Catholic, had been educated in the UK and had served in Italy during the Second World War with the North Irish Horse of the British Army.
Hannan grew up on his parents' farm outside Lima, attending school and university in Britain. He was educated at Winchester House School, Marlborough College and Oriel College, Oxford, where he studied Modern History. He speaks English, French and Spanish.
He was active in university politics, being elected President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1992 – when Nicky Morgan (then known as Nicky Griffith) was his opponent. As an undergraduate, he established the Oxford Campaign for an Independent Britain in 1990, a group which campaigned against closer EU integration – a theme that was to shape his later career.
On 12 September 1992, he organised a protest at the EU finance ministers' summit in Bath against membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Three days later, the pound was forced to leave the system in an event known as Black Wednesday. In an article published in The Daily Telegraph, Hannan has claimed that his protest activities were connected with this event.
After graduating in 1993, Hannan became the first director of the European Research Group, an organisation for Eurosceptic Conservative MPs chaired by Michael Spicer. From 1994-95, he served as Chairman of the National Association of Conservative Graduates. In 1996, he became a leader-writer at the Daily Telegraph under Charles Moore. He wrote leaders for the paper until 2004 and has written blogs and columns ever since. Hannan has since contributed to The Spectator and many other newspapers and magazines around the world. In 1997, he became an adviser and speechwriter to Michael Howard, then Shadow Foreign Secretary.
In 2001, during the general election campaign, while already serving as an MEP, he wrote speeches for William Hague, the Conservative leader. In 1999 he stood down from his posts at the European Research Group and Conservative Graduates.