Reform were cockahoop this week when another Tory defected to the party – Alan Mendoza, a member of Westminster Council, making him the central representative of Nigel Farage’s mob on the central London authority.
Mendoza is the co-founder of The Henry Jackson Society, a right wing thinktank named after an anti-Communist long-time member of the US Congress. He is now expected to help advise Farage on foreign policy.
“His intricate understanding of foreign policy and experience in global affairs is invaluable,” cheered Farage as he announced the defection. “I look forward to working closely with him as we continue to shape our policy platform in the months and years ahead.”
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Mendoza himself said: “Britain today is in abject crisis. At home and abroad, our leaders seem determined to chart a course of national and international decline.
“But the British people deserve better than this. And in Reform UK we finally have a party who will put our interests first, and ensure that our tomorrow is better than our today.”
Aptly for a man whose ward is named Abbey Road, Mendoza has changed his tune somewhat. In May 2015, following a general election in which Farage had once again failed to capture a Westminster seat, he resigned as leader of UKIP only for the party’s national executive committee to refuse to accept his resignation, saying there was “overwhelming evidence” from the membership that they wanted him to stay.
“#Farage’s ‘resignation’ reminds me of a tinpot dictatorship,” wrote Mendoza on what was then Twitter. “Next he’ll be crowned Ruler for Life at a specially convened #UKIP congress.” Perhaps now they’ll, ahem, Come Together.
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