What has the world's worst stag night got to do with Iceland's EU referendum?

Say you were an Icelander still undecided which way to go in this weekend’s referendum on opening accession talks on becoming the European Union’s newest and smallest member. To whom would you look for guidance?

Prime minister Kristrún Frostadóttir with her arguments for economic stability, currency protection and stronger security alliances? Foreign minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir of the Liberal Reform Party? One of the very many pro-EU advocacy groups and volunteers – young activists, business leaders and academics – encouraging the island to vote to negotiate?

Or an oddball member of the UK’s unelected second chamber, who knows better than all of them because he had his stag do in the country 26 years ago? It’s a difficult choice.

The island, with its population of 400,000, will this Saturday hold a referendum on opening talks with the EU on membership, its centre left coalition government having made a pledge two years ago to do so. If it passes, and talks go ahead, there would be a second referendum on whether to accept the terms and join (apologies, New World reader, if the words “second referendum” are triggering).

“The world is sadly getting more unpredictable,” said Gunnarsdóttir last week. “That’s why it’s important for a small nation like Iceland to see the benefits of being a part of a larger group, like-minded nations like the EU. That’s why we think it’s a good time for us to negotiate.”

There are other, compelling, arguments: that Iceland, with its relatively small economy, is more vulnerable to tariffs and trade coercion than it would be as part of the world’s largest economic bloc; and that the krona, one of the world’s smallest national currencies, is weak. Inflation, persistently high, currently stands at 5.4%, nearly double the eurozone (which Iceland would inevitably join were the talks and subsequent referendum be successful), while the baseline interest rate is 8% and typical mortgage rate 9%.

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Compelling arguments all. But wait, here’s Brain of Brexit Daniel Hannan, the ardent Leaver using his column in the pages of the Daily Telegraph to tell the citizens of another country what to do!

Under the headline “Iceland should know better than to fall into the EU’s trap”, the peer and former Tory (he now sits as a crossbencher to allow him to run supposedly ‘non-party-political’ think tank the Institute for Economic Affairs), lectures Icelanders on why they should reject the notion of talks this weekend.

“Icelandic Europhiles are being as vague as possible, claiming that all they want to do is find out what is on offer,” claims the man who once famously claimed “absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market” were Britain to vote to leave the EU.

“‘Yes to see’ is their clever slogan. Except that Icelanders can see the EU today. They don’t need a referendum to ask what terms would be on offer: they can do that right now. No, the real purpose of the referendum is to get a mandate for the harmonisation of standards that accompanies every accession process so that, at the end, Euro-enthusiasts can ride the momentum to full membership.”

In a rare moment of self-awareness, Hannan does acknowledge that “you might say that it is none of my business, Britain having left the EU six years ago”. But that is swiftly rebuffed with what he appears to believe is the killer comeback: “I even spent my stag night in Reykjavík, my best man, the future Conservative MP Mark Reckless, sharing my obsession with the country’s economic miracle.”

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Good grief! Not only does that sound like the most pathetic stag night in history, it might be the most pathetic thing ever said since Piers Morgan boasted to the Sun on Sunday of Donald Trump in 2017: “He calls me ‘Champ’ because I won Celebrity Apprentice. It’s cool having the US President call you Champ.” (Incidentally, your correspondent has also been to Iceland. I didn’t see Hannan or Reckless, but did go to Reykjavík’s penis museum, so…).

He adds: “Why, then, is anyone proposing to get closer to Brussels? To what conceivable problem would EU membership be a solution? Some Icelanders, naturally, stand to gain as officials or as MEPs. Life in Brussels can be – trust me on this – easy and opulent.” This is an argument it would be easier for Hannan to make were he not a member of the House of Lords and thus entitled to vote on and make laws until the day he dies for an attractive daily sitting allowance: life which is – trust me on this – easy and opulent.

The great irony for Icelandophile Hannan is that the man doing most to push the nation into the arms of the EU is the man for whom the peer has been such a cheerleader – the aforementioned Donald Trump.

Speaking in Davos in January on Nato allies’ reluctance to repay Americans’ “blood, sweat and tears”, he mused: “They’re not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland, so Iceland has already cost us a lot of money.”

The sleepy president was almost certainly referring to Greenland, another large land mass in a strategically critical part of the world. But his words still appear to have sent a shiver down Icelanders’ spines as they look to the protection of a larger bloc.

The most recent polls put the referendum at a genuine toss-of-a-coin 50/50. It’s none of your correspondent’s business, of course, but there would be a rich irony if the intervention of the man of whom Hannan once wrote “Britain is suddenly falling in love with Trump” proved the peer, once more, to be completely and utterly wrong about everything.