As the stream of Tory defections to Reform starts to resemble a river, some commentators have asked whether Reform risks being seen as the Conservative Party 2.0. An ominous number of unemployed former MPs have joined up, some no doubt hoping Reform will be the springboard that propels them back into political life, as it has served Andrea Jenkyns.
Even bigger than the risk of being seen as the Conservative Party is the prospect of governing like them. This is what makes the appointment of Alan Mendoza as “Chief Advisor on Global Affairs” quite so alarming. Mendoza, until last week a Conservative councillor and thirty-year party member, is better known as the Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society.
The HJS under Mendoza has been a tireless cheerleader for foreign intervention
The HJS was founded in 2005 as the occupation of Iraq descended into bloody chaos. Interventionism had lost its sheen, and the Henry Jackson Society was established to push a “forward strategy” spreading liberalism and democracy around the world, by military force when needed. Becoming what a former colleague described as Mendoza’s “personal fiefdom”, it has provided a roost for a whole flock of war-hawks.
The HJS under Mendoza has been a tireless cheerleader for foreign intervention. When Britain and our allies began to bomb Colonel Gaddafi out of power and into a grisly death, Mendoza celebrated “that there can never again be talk of faraway countries of which we know little”, predicting that the intervention could “help to expunge the ghosts of the Iraq war” and that “the world has overcome the false lessons of Iraq or of “realism” in foreign policy.”
A year later, as Libya began to slide towards outright civil war, the HJS reassured its readers “Libya is not collapsing … Libya’s militias are much less of a problem than sometimes portrayed in the international press. Their objective is not to carve out fiefdoms in Libya, still less to topple the new government”. Hopefully Mendoza’s advice to Reform will be more reliable.
Naturally, Mendoza long called for Western forces to overthrow Assad. In headier times the Society also proposed bringing down the government of Belarus, and even militarily intervening in Zimbabwe against Robert Mugabe. Most recently, a publication set out a recipe for collapsing the Iranian government: direct military intervention; funding armed separatist groups; a propaganda campaign redefining Persian nationalism; and, ominously, “covert operations targeting regime command and control.” Surely this will deliver peace and stability in the Middle East!
China, too, is often in the sights of Mendoza and the Henry Jackson Society. Scarcely a month goes by without warnings of the perils of Chinese influence. But the Society isn’t opposed to all quiet foreign meddling. In 2017, it was exposed as receiving £10,000 a month from the Japanese Embassy to “wage a propaganda campaign against China” in the British press to oppose the Cameron-era Sino-British rapprochement.
What is Nigel Farage’s foreign policy? It can easily be forgotten now, when Reform has led the polls for so long, but post-referendum Farage found himself back on the sidelines of British politics. He sought relevance from his proximity to Donald Trump, but that proximity — and the television appearances it delivered — depended on his willingness to align with Trump on all matters. His worldview adjusted appropriately. In 2013 Farage had condemned sanctions and military strikes on Iran. By 2018 he was demanding regime change, and nowadays he calls for the Iranian government to be “wiped out”, and hangs around with the hapless pretender of the short-lived Pahlavi dynasty. Pre-Trump he bemoaned the obstacles EU membership presented to striking deals with China; with Trump in the White House he decried the entire basis of trading with the People’s Republic.
Farage and the dissident right once celebrated their opposition to foreign entanglements
We cannot know exactly what catapulted Mendoza to the top of Reform, but Farage’s parties follow a pattern; people gain or lose their jobs based on their relationship with the Big Man. Douglas Carswell, Rupert Lowe, Suzanne Evans: any independent-minded rival finds themselves defenestrated. I wouldn’t go so far as to compare Farage to a “Tinpot Dictator” who needs to “keep his media circus in operation”, as Alan Mendoza of the Henry Jackson Society once put it, but this style has its limitations.
Farage and the dissident right once celebrated their opposition to foreign entanglements, decrying the interventions in Libya and Iraq. Mendoza’s appointment suggests his metamorphosis from an independent-minded Powellite to an interventionist Atlanticist is now completed. A Reform government is now likely to fit the mould of British foreign policy throughout the twenty-first century: breathless Atlanticism and slavish adherence to the Washington line. In this respect, Farage has not taken over the Conservative Party — the Conservative Party has taken over him.
