Dr. Moeed Pirzada had a thorough discussion with Lord Daniel Hannan on March 26, 2025, about the current political situation in Pakistan, its impact on relations with Britain and the US, and China’s influence on Pakistan and the wider world. Lord Daniel Hannan is a British Conservative politician, writer, and journalist. He is a member of the House of Lords and serves as an adviser to the UK Board of Trade.
Dr. Moeed Pirzada: Asalam alaikum! This is Moeed Pirzada. I am today joined by Lord Daniel Hannon from Britain. Lord Daniel Hannan is not only a member a house of lords but is also a noted author who has written extensively on western values democracy and liberalism. Lord Hannon thank you so much for joining and finding time.
Lord Daniel Hannan: Thank you very much Moeed and I should stress Pir in the British sense not in the religious, Islamic sense of a Pir.
Dr. Pirzada: Lord Hannan, Pakistani people have very good understanding of the British system and they do understand that. And Lord Hannan you are someone who I believe has lot of understanding of the Pakistani system. You interact with the decision makers over there, you also met Imran Khan, you have written extensively on western values, on democracy, liberalism. How are you looking at the situation in Pakistan and how would you explain uh that no western government has taken a clear position on what’s happening in Pakistan?
Lord Hannan: Well thank you very much Moeed. I don’t think Britain can be indifferent to Pakistan. We’re linked by a very long history. We remember the huge numbers of then British Indian Muslim volunteers who served in the two world wars crossing half the world to take up arms. And of course we’re home to maybe a million and a half depending on how you count it brits of Pakistani heritage. So we’re very intimately connected and that’s why the the travails of Pakistan, which have seen parody of an election, political imprisonment, violence against political dissident or opponents of the regime, is something that affects us in this country. I think it’s fair to say that there is a lot of sympathy with Imran Khan and with the principle of free elections even beyond the people who his political supporters. I’m not a Pakistani national. It’s not for me to take a view on whether I’d be a PTI voter or something else, but I can’t be neutral on the question of having comprehensive and inclusive elections. And I think we need to get to the point where the rule of law is followed, civil law is applied across the country and all political prisoners, of course including Imran Khan, are released. And this is in everybody’s interests. It would allow in investment to come flooding back into Pakistan, it would help stabilize the region and of course it would reestablish our our bond as one democracy with another.
Dr. Pirzada: Lord Hannan you met Imran Khan. You know him. What do you think went wrong with Imran Khan in Pakistan’s proverbial establishment? You also know the establishment, I mean every British politician of your stature understands Pakistan’s establishment’s psychology where they’re coming from. What do you think went wrong?
Lord Hannan: Yes, I mean of course Imran Imran Khan is regarded almost as an honorary Brit. He spent so much of his life here. He was educated at Oxford. He played cricket here. And an awful lot of people have memories of that period of his life. Including the most recent conservative foreign secretary David Cameron who
Dr. Pirzada: And he got married
Lord Hannan: And he got married to a Brit and his sons are here and so we have, I mean in that sense he’s a very typical Pakistani, in that he has family links to this country which is which is not unusual. I mean I’m told, you can tell me if this is true, I don’t speak any but I’m told he even speaks with a slight English accent. But certainly it is the case that he is he’s regarded in this country as kind of one of ours and that’s across the political spectrum. Certainly from anyone who was a cricket fan. But really it isn’t about that. Whether he’s a good man or a bad one, whether we agree with him or disagree with him, we have to be very alert in a world where autocracy is on the rise to the dangers to democracy. You know I grew up as I guess you did in a world where we expected over time that countries would tend to become freer, more democratic and more governed by the rule of law. And for the first 60 70 years after the end of the second world war that happened. At some point in the last maybe decade and a half that process has stalled and begun to go into reverse. And every year now more countries move from the category of free to unfree than the other way around. So this is a really dangerous development in the world. And you know Pakistan is in a in a pretty rough neighborhood.
Dr. Pirzada: You’re a writer too. You’re not just a politician here, you’re a writer too. You write about these things. Why do you think it happened that after the postwar period in the initial 30 40 years it looked like the democracy is spreading, the liberalism is spreading, the the freedom of media is spreading, but why there’s a backslide?
Lord Hannan: That’s a really really good question. Why did it spread? I think because it worked, right? It yielded a much higher standard of living. The difference between West Germany and East Germany or between South Korea and North Korea was a kind of textbook laboratory quality experiment showing how liberal market capitalism worked better than the alternatives. Why has it gone into reverse in the last 10 or 15 years? I mean is it to do with the global financial crisis? Is it to do with the spread of smartphones hat kind of makes people angrier and more impatient? I don’t know. But whatever it is we have to defend democracy wherever we can. And this is why the fate of Imran Khan is…I would appeal to any Pakistani viewers who are not PTI supporters to defend the principle, right? The the biggest danger to democracy in the world is that people stop caring about process when they happen to favor a particular outcome. And so I would appeal to anyone out there who supports you know the Sharifs or supports the the PPP or whatever. Make a bigger stand in favor of inclusive elections, right? And act the way you would want the other party to treat you if the the situation was reversed. That’s how you have an open society. We have to have that fellow feeling of citizenship that our opponents are not our enemies. And that I think is in danger.
Dr. Pirzada: Lord Hannah, I’m so glad that you are taking a broader perspective that it’s not only about Imran Khan of PTI, especially about the principles of democracy, human rights rule of law. But how do we then understand that the conservative the Tori government before this and even the present labor government have not taken any stand, neither overtly nor behind the scenes, in putting pressure on the Pakistani military establishment that they have to you know especially if you look at the house resolution 901 from the US Congress you know 387 to7 that the elections in Pakistan were not conducted properly the Biden administration should actually hold an accounting for this you know yet nothing has really happened. Neither from Washington in terms of administration nor from the British government. Why there is no real moral outrage?
Lord Hannan: Well, I’m not sure it’s true that there’s been no statement. Like I say, David Cameron was foreign secretary when the when the the sham elections were held in Pakistan and he put out a very strong statement condemning the irregularities in the poll and asking for an inclusive process. But you have to ask what specifically could we do? There is a limit to the power of any country, there’s a limit to your capacity to deploy force thousands of miles away. So would we want to sanction the whole country? I don’t see what that would achieve. Sanctions I think never work. They hurt the wrong people. They hurt ordinary people in the sanctioned country and in your own and often they make people rally to the regime that you disapprove of. Could you maybe have some targeted sanctions against specific individuals? Well maybe. And that is that is something I would like to see if we can’t resolve this situation. I have no idea. You know, I’m an opposition politician in the UK, which is a lot less dangerous than being an opposition politician in Pakistan right now. But it means that I don’t really have any any insight into what is happening behind the scenes. I think under the previous government, and I’d be surprised if this has changed, I think there was pressure to try and get to some kind of agreement. And what I mean by that is I think there was a hope that the need to be some flexibility on all sides. In other words, it is unrealistic in the current situation just to say “Imran Khan should be released and there should be a free election tomorrow” because that doesn’t incentivize the other side to enter into talks. But I think the endgame needs to be an inclusive process. So I think the best realistic outcome is that we have some kind of roundtable, some kind of process, a little bit like what happened at the end of communism in 1990 where the people who had the army, the security services, the interior ministry, were able to enter into a transition where some of their interests were protected but on the understanding that the eventual outcome would be a full inclusive democratic election and something similar maybe including immunity for people and and so on and transitional phases something similar seems to me the the likeliest outcome and certainly one that I think the US is pushing for too.
Dr. Pirzada: So you said a number of things, you know, first you said in terms of targeted sanctions in the last 24 hours one Republican congressman Joe Wilson has actually brought and introduced resolution a Pakistan Democratic act in the United States Congress which is actually proposing targeted sanctions including the sanctions from Pakistan’s current army chief which is unprecedented. How do you look at that?
Lord Hannan: It’s a powerful, that’s a gun with one bullet in, right? So you want to be careful about when you pull the trigger because you only get to do it once. You know my experience which is limited but my experience of talking both, to military, to generals in Pakistan and to if you like the the wider community, political community around them and their extended families and friends, is that they do care about their reputation. They care about international opinion and they are basically patriotic, right? They don’t like the idea of their country becoming a pariah. So this is not like dealing with you know Kim Jong-un in North Korea or dealing with the Ayatollas in Tehran. We’re dealing with people who share our outlook and our values. And so I think they are susceptible to argument as well as to moral pressure. I wouldn’t rule out sanctions if everything else fails but I think that’s a weapon that is a powerful threat, once you’ve deployed it you haven’t got anything else in your arsenal. So you need to be very careful about how to time it.
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Dr. Pirzada: Lord Hannan, I really like when you say that they they are susceptible to moral pressure. And that is the reality. The Pakistani decision makers have an umbilical link with Britain and also with the United States. I mean if you look at the children, the sons and daughters of the Pakistani generals and the elite whether it’s civil or the military or the judiciary they want to come to Oxford and Cambridge and London school of economics and university of London SOASS and all that and same for the United States and they are not thinking of retiring and setting down in China somewhere, you know in North Korea, they want to come and live in UK and they want to do shopping in Harrods and maybe Dubai has replaced it a little bit but despite this and also you tell that you have discussions with them. What is the what is the reason that this moral pressure over the past 3 years hasn’t really materialized? What is the resistance what is that they tell you in return?
Lord Hannan: it’s a very good question and I wish I knew the answer. I mean first of all you’re absolutely right. There was a fascinating situation which illustrates your point beautifully which is that last academic term all of the officers of the Oxford Union, which is the most prestigious debating organization in the world, all of them were Pakistani nationals. All four, right? And coming to a western university as Imran Khan did at the same university you are bound to absorb a whole bunch of ideas and and values. I mean the essence of the Oxford Union is that you stand for an election and a free election and at the end the guy who gets the most votes wins, right? You can’t go through all of that and then be completely untouched by it, right? So this is why I say I think we’re dealing with people who are fundamentally susceptible to these arguments. Why have they not yet moved? Honestly, I suspect they’ve blundered into a situation and they don’t know how to get out of it now. Previous interventions by the army in Pakistan have tended to be accepted, maybe not welcomed but have been accepted by the population. Pakistan now has a very young population and the expectations of young Pakistanis are much higher. They’re not prepared to be fatalistic about coups. And that’s especially true, I have to say of the Pakistani diaspora in my country. Even people who are not Imran Khan supporters cannot understand how an election can just be canceled like that. It’s so outside their frame of reference. And this is something when whenever I’m recognized by any really unpolitical people, you know, shopkeepers, cab drivers, whatever it’s something that comes up in conversation all the time. So I think the regime is in this slightly awkward position that every day that Imran Khan stays in prison he becomes more popular. And how then do they negotiate an outcome that doesn’t just result in all of them being put in prison? This is why I think we need some delicate diplomacy. There are you know one or there are some specific crimes that will need to be answered for but equally we need to give the people who have power now a reasonable road map that will allow them to move to some kind of compromised solution retaining their freedom and their dignity.
Dr. Pirzada: I fully agree with you that they have blundered into it. They need a way out. We need an interim arrangement some sort of transition. But then someone has to help them. Either it’s Britain or it’s Dubai or it’s Saudi Arabia or it’s the Trump administration. Someone has to give them the guarantees that if you make these concessions, if you let the democratic process open the Twitter, let the YouTube work free, the journalist free, the political workers. There have to be baby steps. But they are in such a reactive mood, you know, like I mean they’re trying to even stop these kind of YouTube discussions. I mean this kind of discussion which we’re doing even this hurts them you know. They have ordered them into a position, someone has to help them.
Lord Hannan: I agree, I agree there was a comical moment just before Iran Khan was arrested. When he was under house arrest and I had arranged for him to do a zoom call with a bunch of conservative politicians and minutes before it was supposed to begin all the communications to his compound were cut and indeed for everyone else within sort of 15 mile radius um so that he couldn’t talk. Now I mean my reaction to that is how amateur, you know, how blundering. What a stupid thing to do because it just makes you look bad. We then, you know, we rescheduled it for the following day with Starlink but it’s a kind of an almost childishly inept regime that will do something like that. Which is a reminder of something that I’ve felt very strongly. I grew up partly in South America and we had a military government when I was a small boy in Peru. There is no such thing as a good military government, right? Whatever intentions they begin with and I don’t doubt the motivations of a lot of these soldiers. I think that a lot of them sincerely think that they’re saving the country from chaos or communism or whatever it is. But in the end soldiers are not good politicians. Being a politician is is not as easy as it looks from the outside. And it takes a special skill set. And with a very small number of exceptions generals do it very badly. The small number of exceptions are the ones who stand for elections. And you know a very basic point: If you’re a soldier and you think your country needs a different political direction then resign your commission and offer yourself to election like anybody else.
Dr. Pirzada: It’s very interesting when you say that these soldiers and the generals are not necessarily good politicians. But why for the past 50 plus years after second World War the West that has espoused liberalism has supported the military dictatorships across the world? What is the necessity?
Lord Hannan: Well, I mean at first it was a straightforward question of cold war alignment is that line often attributed to FDR, he may be a son of a bitch but he’s our son of a bitch about the Samoza dictatorship. I think something similar pertained, I mean Indira Gandhi’s India was technically neutral but in every practical sense it was sympathetic to the USSR and therefore Pakistan became a western ally regardless of who was in charge. The end of the cold war should have meant the end of all such thinking, right? We should now reverse Franklin Roosevelt’s thinking. We should now be able to say “he may be our son of bitch a but he’s a son of a bitch,” right? In other words, a regime that is brutal and oppressive shouldn’t get a get out of jail card simply because it declares itself to be our ally in the war on terrorism or whatever. And I think this is really important because you know better than I do how precarious the financial situation is in Pakistan and that is linked to political instability. Nobody is going to invest in a country with an uncertain future like that. The regime is struggling to pay the bills. Who knows what might follow in that situation? I could see a situation where if everything else fails the people running the country will be tempted to start selling nuclear secrets. And if there’s one thing that everyone should be able to agree on it’s that we do not want any more nuclear proliferation in a dangerous region. And so that’s why I think there is a direct Western interest in democratization. Even if the election is won by somebody that you wouldn’t have chosen yourself that is still better. A poor democracy is still in the long run better than a friendly military regime.
Dr. Pirzada: The word democracy is very confusing to many people in the western world because they have been fed the toxic diet that democracy is perhaps only a western idea. So we need to unbox the word democracy. Democracy is basically rule of law, the central ingredient is the rule of law and the human rights. It’s not possible, you know, the rule of law is not possible and when you say that the possibility of selling the nuclear weapons you do not think that in terms of China because China still has rule of law it abides by a certain kind of contextual reality. You would not think the Chinese will actually go and sell the nuclear weapons to to Saudis or to Syrians to someone but in case of Pakistan what is also suffering is the rule of law but when you say the precarious financial situation in that context and you also say that countries should not have sanctions. Yes, they should not have sanctions but a credible threat and a warning that sanctions can come on your way if you don’t make progress. Like for instance, look at the European Union and the GSP plus. It is part of their constitution that the GSP plus status is hinges upon human rights upon the governance yard state. Yet the European Union is one of the largest perhaps, the largest exporter of the Pakistani goods, they have not been able to apply that pressure on Pakistan.
Lord Hannan: Yeah, Yeah, No I think that’s right. You’re absolutely right. Moeed to frame it like that. At the end of his life the great economist Milton Friedman said “I now realize that the rule of law is all really that matters and that democracy and property right and everything else they all they all flow from it.” If you have the rule of law without democracy as we had in Hong Kong you have a stable society where there’s growth, where there’s free contract and where there’s stability and eventually that will lead to some organs of representative government which it did in Hong Kong up until the moment of the Chinese takeover. If it’s the other way around if you have democracy but not the rule of law then that ends up in mob rule and it never lasts. So this is why I would say that if I were trying to propose a plan for some kind of solution in Pakistan at the top I would say a restoration of civil rights and the rule of law an end to arbitrary detention. An end to we saw, what in any normal language would be called martial law. In other words, civilians being tried in a way that is outside the normal political system and particularly these constitutional changes. What do we mean by the rule of law? If we’re explaining the rule of law in simple terms: it’s that the people in charge don’t get to make up the rules as they go along, right? That the law applies to everybody equally and that it applies whether you’re the president of the republic or whether you’re the poorest guy in the in the country. And it is the most precious thing and I think we can both acknowledge that it is under threat around the world. I mean even in the US the readiness now of partisans on both sides to argue that elections only count if their guy wins. It’s a pretty scary development.
Dr. Pirzada: So I’m giving some sort of a news to you that some of the Pakistani American groups, to whom you might be familiar, have been approached by the highest possible level of the Pakistani establishment in a sincere effort to engage them and the argument is this that you we need to give us 30 35 days. I mean if you tone down a little bit, I mean stop engaging the congress, I mean stop bringing more pressure from social media from YouTube and Facebook and Twitter, then we can improve things in Pakistan. So I think that this is, I can’t really be 100% sure, but I think there is a sincerity on part of the Pakistani establishment. They think they are also in a corner. They’re cornered by the circumstances and they want to improve things. This may be an opportunity for people who are placed in a position like you, who can have trust on both sides within the Pakistani system and on the West. I understand this thing, I mean knowing you a little bit that you know you have a have an interaction with the Republican party in United States as well, what kind of role can you play in resolving this conflict?
Lord Hannan: Yeah, well first of all I think your analysis is correct. At the moment all of the pressure is on the regime whereas politically there isn’t really much pressure on Imran because he’s, as we said earlier, he’s getting more popular every day that he’s incarcerated. And so that I think is the the context in which people are looking for a solution. I think there is quite a lot of sympathy for him in the Republican party because a lot of American Republicans see parallels with Donald Trump’s legal problems, right? So what they see when they see Imran Khan is a guy who the lawyers tried to stop because he would have won the election, right? I mean I’m simplifying but only a little bit and you know the US has historically preferred democratic governments when it can as long as it, you know, doesn’t cost it too much. So I think there is a chance of a coordinated move to try and break the deadlock. I think it is more likely to come from the English speaking democracies than from the European Union. I just think Pakistan, you know, it’s a Commonwealth country. The Commonwealth stands for certain values and ultimately membership of the Commonwealth is contingent on upholding those values, right? You can be kicked out as has happened before to some countries. If you’re too blatantly anti-democratic, plus of course as you know the US has a a) large diaspora community and b) still has a residual interest as the as the traditional cold war ally. So I think the solution is likely to come from the Anglophere democracies in the end. Not least by the way, because and this is a very good thing I think in this context because a lot of our military have direct contacts with Pakistani military. I mean there’s you know Pakistani generals the the top generals now overwhelmingly did their training in Sandhurst. You know the younger ones may now be going off to Beijing or whatever but the people at the top have very close links with British army personnel and that I think gives us a certain leverage as well.
Dr. Pirzada: The Pakistan’s army chief Jal Aimi was in Sandhurst a few weeks ago, you know. In fact a joint program between Britain and Pakistan which is for regional stabilization. But since you also write international relations you’re someone very deeply interested on the global world order. Where do we fit China into all this equation?
Lord Hannan: China is a categorical threat to the west and I will explain why I know that Pakistan has always looked at China as a protector but I’d invite viewers to look at the nature of Chinese society, right? Not China as a geopolitical fact but China as a regime. There is the most terrifying surveillance state there based on face recognition technology, geoloccation and it has been especially viciously aimed at the Muslim minority. So when you see pictures of roadblocks in Shinan and the the Ugers are being told to, I used to watch the news and I would think, what are they looking for? What do you mean a roadblock? It’s their own country. Who are they? What it is is that if you’re a a Chinese Muslim you are required to have mandatory spyware on your phone, right? And this so the the roadblock is making sure that you haven’t got some clever young nephew who’s managed to take the app off your phone, right? What does the app look for? What’s it searching for is antisocial behavior. What counts as antisocial behavior? Growing a beard, looking at the wrong websites, observing Ramadan, talking to foreigners. If you tick too many of those boxes the algorithm sentences you to mandatory re-education without any human supervision. Now here’s why this scares me: If they can do that in Shining they can do it all over China and they can export it, right? They can say to any friendly regime or any anti-western autocratic regime “you don’t need to worry about elections anymore. We will give you this kind of technology and then we don’t need to ever invest in a successor because you’re always going to be there” And that I see as a genuinely different model to the liberal, open capitalist one that we’ve had here. And you only have to think for a second about what it would be like to live like that. Yes, China does some things quite well it has delivered economic growth and so on but at what terrible cost? And with what, brainwashing of its population? Um I have to say I’ve always been and actually I’d include Imran in my criticism here. I’ve always been disappointed in the unwillingness of leaders in Muslim majority countries to criticize the way China treats its religious minorities. It would be, we’ve been talking about all the pressure we could bring on on Pakistan. Well, who is bringing pressure on China about this almost I won’t say genocidal but this a degree of repression against it against its Muslim minority that is is almost without precedent in the world.
Dr. Pirzada: It’s very interesting when you say that the Muslim countries do not condemn China for what’s happening in Shing Jang and with the Ugers. The one perhaps reason from foreign policies is that Chinese has a firm position of not taking a position on the internal affairs of the other countries. Now here brings a complexity. The Pakistani regimes can play between China and the West and the irony is this: The only way you can keep Pakistan falling more deeper into Chinese influences to have a meaningful democracy. How do you look at that equation? it’s very complex.
Lord Hannan: Yeah I couldn’t agree more. And you know like I say I probably, there were a couple of issues where I disagreed with Imran Khan but one of them was he was saying I thought some slightly naive things towards the end about China. On one occasion he said “oh you know we always thought western democracy was a great idea but how come the Chinese are growing so much faster than the west.” Well, I mean even if that were true and I’m not sure it is, when you look at the real figures but even if that were true it’s a dangerous argument because it legitimizes activity such as what we’re now seeing in Pakistan. But I’m pretty confident that having been through the hellish experience that he has and having been a political prisoner he will have an even deeper appreciation for democracy than he had before. One thing that I very much did admire about him is that he built a party from the grassroots up. It was a genuine political movement. He didn’t just go through local power brokers and you know, buy regional support and and rely on sort of bar adder links. He got people to think about what they wanted and then he built a political party which was not regional and not sectarian. That’s a really important building block for democracy and that I think counts very much in his favor. And you know maybe I think he said at one point “look, I don’t care what happens to me. The important thing is to end the current crisis.” I mean it may be that under some compromised deal he doesn’t initially go back into politics that there is some power sharing or whatever. Fine, I mean I think the important thing is to break the deadlock and we shouldn’t get too hung up. And I’m certainly in no position to dictate what the terms will be but I actually, I have some confidence in Imran Khan’s own sense of responsibility and patriotism. I think he wouldn’t want to inflict more chaos on the country simply because he was holding out for total victory.
Dr. Pirzada: Okay, I understand you had to go somewhere as well but just one or two quick questions, please. Given the fact that the Tory party of which you are a member has a very intimate relationship with the Republicans. I keep on hearing this that the delegations of the British Tory party after every two three months are here in Washington, having meetings and dinners with the Republicans. How are you looking at the kind of lecturing that has been done by the Trump administration Elon Musk and his team and also by the vice president on Britain and Europe on democracy, on human rights, on freedom of expression. How you look at that?
Lord Hannan: Well, that’s a very good question. It has positive and negative aspects. So I think most people in this country will accept that the vice president was on to something when he talked about the lack of free speech in Europe. The examples he gave were when you have them all lined up like that and presented to you. Sometimes people can be you know they say a frog is boiled so slowly that it doesn’t realize what’s happening. The loss of free speech in Britain and in Europe has been gradual. So it’s quite a wakeup call when the vice president of the world’s biggest republic comes and say or the most powerful and wealthy republic comes and says “look, how have you agreed to do to all of this” and I think he’s got a point about that and Elon Musk has certainly got a point about the slide towards censorship online. I have to say I am worried about two developments first as I say and this isn’t just the Republicans, it’s across the country but this determination to elevate outcome over process. Now the readiness of people to, let me put it another way, the negative polarization the readiness to put up with almost anything provided it upsets the other side enough. I think that’s a very unhealthy thing in a democracy. The other thing that worries me is the aggressive trade policies and annexationist rhetoric of the administration and I’m thinking particularly I had flagged up in advance. No one could have been surprised that Donald Trump was going to pull out of Ukraine. He obviously has a mandate to do that. But the willingness to repeat Putin’s propaganda points, to call Zilinsky a dictator, to claim that Ukraine started the war. I mean seriously the Ukraine started the war. They waited until that military exercise when the Russians had hundreds of thousands of troops gathered on their borders in February 2022 and they suddenly picked that moment to start the war. I mean come on, right? And then even worse than that making an aggressive territorial claim on Denmark an NATO ally and then launching an actual economic war on Canada. I mean these are countries that have always been very loyal US allies after 9/11. I remember actually I visited, I was a member of the European Parliament at the time and I visited some of the the British troops in Helmond in Afghanistan because it was a Christmas holiday and I thought I I’ll go and see these guys in the British camp was a significant contingent of Danish soldiers. Now you know why Denmark hadn’t been attacked. Denmark didn’t have any strategic interest in Afghanistan. I’m not sure anyone in Europe has a strategic interest in Afghanistan, particularly It’s you know they were there because they had felt the trauma of 9/11 as an attack on every decent friend of America and they said if you guys are under attack we’re here to help. So I think that to repay them like this is shoddy and and dishonorable. And it upsets me that’s so polarized is US society that people are prepared to go along just because they’ve been given a new party line to go along with this ludicrous idea that friendly countries like Denmark and Canada are now suddenly at fault because somebody’s told them that’s what they should be thinking. Now I had hoped that the US would hold itself to a higher standard and I hope that this moment doesn’t last because you know, the world needs a strong engaged United States. It’s been the the responsibility and the duty of that country to carry mankind’s loftiest dreams.
Dr. Pirzada: Last question if I can? Lord Hannan, you must have followed the German decision of the new chancellor and the new coalition to rearm. And the reason is this that they’re sort of feeling disappointed by the positions Donald Trump is taking on NATO and on Ukraine. How do you see Europe and Trump administration interacting with each other and where would Britain stand?
Lord Hannan: I don’t see them interacting very well. In the end I think the ties of language and law of culture and kinship of habit and history that bind us to the United States are much closer than the geographical ties that bind us to Europe. That doesn’t mean that the US is always right in these disputes. And I’ve, just in my last answer, set up some of the things that I think they’re getting wrong. But at the end of the day we’re very close allies. We have a proximity on military and intelligence technology even on nuclear technology that is without precedent between any two sovereign countries. The United States is our single biggest market. Not only that I mean if you count by country rather than treating the EU as a single state the US is a bigger market for us than our second, third, fourth and fifth markets put together, right? We are the single biggest investor in the US. They are the single biggest investor here. A million Brits every day turn up to work for US-owned companies. A million Americans every day clock in to work for for British owned companies. So I think we have, now that we’re outside the European Union, we have an opportunity to deepen that relationship. And I think that does carry a responsibility when we think that the US is in the wrong as in I think it plainly is visa vie Canada. We should say so, we shouldn’t be be shy of criticizing the bigger partner. We we should ask America to live up to its own ideals which are sublime and glorious.
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Dr. Pirzada: I 100% agree that Britain has umbilical links with United States. Of course United States is a cultural and civilizational progeny of Great Britain. I forgot to tell you I’m also a naturalized British citizen and you are a Euro subtect. You have taken away our European passport you know. So it was such a, still we are actually able to go. I mean anywhere in the Europe. I just was in Europe for 2 months in 2024. But more restrictions are coming for the British passports. And you also mentioned the trade in the markets. Do you think that the decision of the Brexit has done well for Britain?
Lord Hannan: Yes because we become a democracy again. We get to hire and fire the people who pass our laws. I think we will now be able to get a a trade deal with the US which as I say is by far our biggest trading partner which obviously you couldn’t do that in the European Union. The Brussels controls all of your trade. And I think even this Labor government which came to office very very anti- Brexit is realizing that it is already benefiting from divergence on financial services rules on gene editing on trade. But I’d like us to go much further I don’t think we’ve been nearly ambitious enough in grasping the Brexit opportunities and and I particularly think that’s true visa vie the Commonwealth. One idea that I’d like to see is a Commonwealth business visa. So let’s leave aside the question of of immigration, the right to travel for business, and you know maybe this wouldn’t apply to every single Commonwealth country. You couldn’t force anyone to do it. It would be an opt-in scheme but that once you have the visa you can go to any of the countries involved. I mean wouldn’t that be a way of massively facilitating trade and investment. I always say this to your fellow Brits of Pakistani origin. Now that you’ve told me that we share a passport, I mean it surprises me that there is not more investment in Pakistan by some of the Brits of Pakistani heritage who have done very well here and of course that the reason but despite all the obvious attractions of having friends and family and language and all that the thing that holds them back, as I don’t need to tell you, is basically insecurity over property rights and the rule rule of law. They don’t want to make an investment until they know it’s secure. Now that is something we should be helping with right and the best way of of helping is by engaging in terms of commerce in terms of institutional links so that good practice spreads and that’s something we we could be doing throughout the commonwealth.
Dr Pirzada: I don’t know if you have met Sir Anwar Parvez. He is one of the biggest investors, I mean from Britain. I met him a number of times, Best Way Group in Pakistan, the UBL the United Bank Limited but also since I met him he was always frustrated for the same reasons which you have mentioned the rule of law issues.
Lord Hannan it has been a pleasure talking to you and listening to you and I hope we continue to talk and we should be talking again in in few months time.
Lord Hannan: Let’s hope so Moeed, it’s been a great pleasure. Thank you.