On 24 March 2009, after Gordon Brown had given a short speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in advance of the G20 London summit, Hannan followed up by delivering a 3-minute speech strongly criticising the response by Gordon Brown to the global financial crisis. He finished the speech with the phrase, "the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government", which was a quote taken from a 1992 speech by then-Labour Party leader John Smith about then-Prime Minister John Major. A video clip of the speech went viral on YouTube that evening It eventually got over 3 million views, and two years later remained the most-watched YouTube video of any UK politician.