Britain's exit from the EU in parallel to Farage's negative, isolationist one." As he was about to graduate in 1992, Hannan wrote to Tory rebels who were against the Maastricht Treaty in 1992; together they created the European Research Group, with Hannan as their secretary. Hannan claims the name was intentionally innocuous, since the group worked unabashedly against the single currency and the ECJ. He was involved in the creation of the Congress for Democracy, an umbrella organisation for various Eurosceptic groups, which reportedly contained both trade union shop stewards and UKIP activists. On Twitter, Hannan claimed that "it's irresponsible to scare EU nationals in the UK by hinting their status might change after Brexit. No one's suggesting such a thing". This was despite the government's wish to make EU nationals apply for "settled status" to remain in the UK. In an interview in 2015 Hannan asserted that "absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market." Seven years later, he began a Daily Telegraph column with "Staying in the single market, or large parts of it, would have saved us a lot of trouble", noting that that statement had long been treated as a "pledge" and used to discredit him Critics of Brexit treated that as a major concession on his part, given his lengthy advocacy for the UK to leave the EU long before 2016. Hannan clarified that what he had always advocated was that after leaving the EU, the UK should rejoin the European Free Trade Association, of which it had been a founding member, and thus retain what benefits of the single market it felt it should. Given the narrow success of the referendum, he emphasized that it was important that an agreement on the terms of Britain's departure have broad support from both sides, and he believed that would have been a start. Had Cameron's successor been an enthusiastic Leave supporter, Hannan believed, that would have come to pass and the UK would have left the EU earlier than it ultimately did. May's support for retaining freedom of movement above all else hampered that transition, empowered extremists on both sides, and led to Britain's failure to take advantage of many opportunities to relax or repeal EU legislation it had retained, leaving the UK in some ways more restrictive than some EU countries. Some of those who responded were not convinced, primarily noting