There could be no better symbol of old British common sense, kindness, friendliness, normality, sanity, good cheer and healing than a cup of tea. (Usually served with milk and sugar.) Any disaster can be faced, dealt with, overcome, remedied, survived, reduced, or eliminated once you’ve had a cup of good strong tea. In the Kingdom of the rainy islands, tea is a panacea.

Your spouse left you? Have a cup of tea.

Your horse came in last? Your bus was bombed and you lost a leg? Your TV’s on the blink? You trod on your glasses? Your Social Security benefit hasn’t come through? You’ve been told to wait two years for an urgent operation? The Labour Government’s bankrupted you and the whole country?

Never mind, have a cup of tea.

So however unsuitable it may seem to hold a Tea Party in imitation of the the American Tea Party Movement in the very country against which the first political Tea Party launched a Revolution, in another way the idea could not be more British.

Daniel Hannan, British Conservative Party member of the European Parliament, held a Tea Party in Brighton, UK, on Saturday, February 27, 2010, with only two days’ notice – chiefly through the Telegraph, where his columns appear. He spoke about the fiscal irresponsibility of the government.

It was a small beginning, but the idea might spread and a British Tea Party movement grow into a nation-wide protest against big government and high taxation.

Here Hannan thanks the 300 or so who attended:

Thanks to everyone who came to the Brighton Tea Party, and apologies to those who couldn’t get in. We opened and filled an adjoining room, but it was still quite a squash. The hotel manager told me afterwards that there had been more than 300 people present, not counting those who had had to be turned away. Not bad for a meeting organised with two days’ notice.

If you can run a tea-party in Brighton Pavilion – the constituency which the Greens are most hopeful of winning – you can run one anywhere. You don’t have to be a small-government Conservative to feel that taxation, spending and borrowing are currently too high.

Let me say it one more time. Gordon Brown has doubled the national debt. Every second, it rises by another 5,000 pounds. Our deficit is 12.6 per cent of GDP compared to Greece’s 12.7. All this despite the additional trillion pounds taken in taxation since 1997.

We can’t afford another month of this, let alone another five years.

Thanks to the Freedom Association for helping to put everything together …

The Freedom Association is our partner organization. We are once again proud of what it’s doing for the cause of freedom in socialist Britain.