Leading Brexiteer Daniel Hannan got it right for once last week. The now ennobled Baron Hannan – an adviser to the UK government’s Board of Trade – waxed lyrical about Britain joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), suggesting it could be a backdoor route to concluding the increasingly beleaguered UK trade deal with the US which Boris Johnson’s government longs for. Hannan acknowledged that British farmers and environmentalists might oppose a trade deal, but he implied it was a price worth paying for an agreement which forces governments to “refrain from certain actions that would restrict free commerce”. Such restrictions include EU regulations aimed at controlling the Big Tech giants in favour of Hannan’s preferred free market, “Hayekian” approach to the exploitation of our data.