The Top 12 Political Rants

The 12 best political rants have been compiled by The Fix, the Washington Post political blog.

Some of them are long. No 9, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie laying into his own Republican Party leadership in Congress, lasts for 38 minutes (and includes an immortal line about “iconic symbols of New Jersey culture”).

Richard Nixon, no 10, is always worth seeing again. And Howard Dean, no 3, is well worth another look: the “Dean scream” comes across as remarkably tame eight years later.

The procedural rants in Congress, nos 2 and 7, make the House of Commons seem courteous and dignified in a way that we do not value enough.

Are there any British rants that would be on an equivalent list? I can think only of Daniel Hannan’s graceless attack on Gordon Brown in the European Parliament in 2009 (pictured), which now has had nearly 3m views, and which also makes the point about the value of the conventions of the British Parliament.

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• greggf

  About Gordon Brown: his shameless two-faced gaffe, calling Mrs Gillian Duffy a bigot, caught on microphone in Rochdale is as good a rant as we are likely to see in the UK

• Junius

  Daniel Hannan is a folk hero on the Telegraph blogs for this discourteous outburst, although it is easily matched by another at the expense of Herman van Rompuy delivered by fellow Eurosceptic Nigel Farage in the EU chamber.

  No doubt these worthies would explain that normally they are the very model of courtesy and good manners but become so jolly angry, what with Gordon Brown’s mismanagement of the economy, Britain’s loss of sovereignty and lack of democracy in the EU and the tyranny of Our Masters in Brussels, that their emotions simply cannot be contained.

  If during their childhood they had offered the same excuse for such ill-mannered tantrums, they would surely have been packed off to bed with no supper. Or maybe not? Perhaps their parents are to blame.

• Wilky1

  What about Farage’s “who are you” rant and the amoeba van Rumpuy in the European Parliament? Surely that get a mention? If only for the comic factor that years later, we still don’t know who he is……

• Groundswell

  Daniel Hannan – a great fan of watching captive animals drown in their own blood at bullfights. Not merely a pop-eyed, cadaverous Tory-boy caricature – but an active, practising sadist.

• Tim

  Hannan’s speech was brilliant. End of.

  Nigel bashes the EU everyday of the week; this one caught the eye only because he called Rumpey Pumpey a dishrag. I have no problem with that

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