Leadership Quote by Daniel Hannan

Hannan is doing two things at once: selling a procedural reform and smuggling in an ideological conclusion. The opening claim about initiative states having “fewer laws and lower taxes” isn’t just a descriptive tidbit; it’s a promise that direct democracy functions as a kind of political diet plan, trimming the excesses of legislatures that, in his framing, can’t help but grow government. He’s not arguing policy-by-policy. He’s arguing that the mechanism itself has a built-in bias toward restraint.

The phrase “the U.S. states that allow” borrows American federalism as a laboratory, a favorite move for politicians making change feel less radical. If it works in Oregon or California, the logic goes, it can be imported without the leap of faith. But the subtext is more pointed: representative institutions are depicted as producer capture, while “citizens” are cast as disciplined consumers who will vote down bloat when given the chance.

Then he pivots to the softer sell: “the beauty of the system” and “best practice.” That language launders a contested political project (more referenda, less parliamentary mediation) through the soothing vocabulary of managerial competence. “Best practice” suggests a neutral, evidence-based diffusion of what works, when initiative politics in practice often spreads through well-funded campaigns, simple slogans, and emotional wedge issues. His line relies on a faith that voters, aggregated, are more prudential than the politicians they elect.

Contextually, it fits Hannan’s broader Euroskeptic, small-state sensibility: decentralize power, increase veto points, and let competition between jurisdictions discipline the tax-and-regulate impulse. The cleverness is that it presents that preference not as ideology, but as design.