Reform-Linked Think Tank Criticises "Unfair" Right Wing Attacks On Civil Service
5 min read
The head of a new think tank with links to Reform UK has pushed back against the “right-wing, knee-jerk” attacks on civil servants.
Jonathan Brown, chief executive officer of Centre for a Better Britain, spoke to PoliticsHome ahead of the think tank's formal launch in September.
According to Brown, who used to be the chief operating officer of Nigel Farage's party before being removed from the position in October, the think tank has raised £1m as part of its bid to grow into an influential, centre-right player in Westminster politics.
In an interview with PoliticsHome, Brown, a former Foreign Office diplomat, said Whitehall reform would be key to the policy programme being put forward by CBB in the coming months.
Brown argued that a centre-right government, potentially one led by Reform, will need to bring non-traditional types into the civil service, like senior business people and academics, to ensure it can push through its plans.
However, while supporting significant Whitehall reform, Brown defended his former colleagues in the civil service from what he described as "classic right-wing, knee-jerk" attacks.
“I am a former civil servant. I don’t think everyone in the civil service [is bad]. I will go very much on record on that. There's a lot of great talent there...
“The classic right-wing, knee-jerk, ‘oh God, all civil servants are bad’ is very unfair," he said.
Brown added: "There are clearly pockets that need huge improvement, but there is a lot of talent in the civil service, which actually needs to be released.”
PoliticsHome reported earlier this year that those involved in setting up the new think tank, which was originally called Resolute 1850, had met with Farage and Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice as part of their preparations. Now, both the party and the think tank have offices in the same Westminster building, Millbank Tower.
Despite that, Reform insists it has no formal ties with CBB and is creating policy in-house.
Brown revealed that the think tank's first policy paper is expected to be on energy policy.
This is set to be followed by a report on reforming the UK’s pensions system, Brown said, "because we are very likely to go into a proper economic debt crisis within the next year, maybe before Christmas".
As well as producing policy ideas, CBB will aim to support a future centre-right administration by recruiting "talented" people who could potentially go on to serve in government as advisers and officials.
While the think tank has close links to Reform, Brown stresses that it has been developing links with Conservative Party politicians, too.
Within Westminster, there are a plethora of think-tanks on the right, including the Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies, Institute of Economic Affairs, and Onward.
According to Brown, while these organisations do "a lot of good work", his new outfit would offer a more comprehensive policy platform for an incoming government to adopt.
“One of the things we’re thinking about is the severity of the crisis. A lot of centre-right think tanks think, 'let’s go 20 per cent this way or 20 per cent that way'. What we need to do is 180 on a whole range of issues," he told PoliticsHome.
“We're thinking very solidly about what a platform for government might look like.
"Engaging with politicians is quite important. We have natural links of reform. We’ve built up a lot of links with the Conservative Party.”
Brown was keen, however, to dismiss the idea that his new think tank is an attempt to create a Donald Trump-aligned, MAGA-esque movement on the other side of the Atlantic.
“The idea that we’re some sort of UK MAGA [Make America Great Again] is just nonsense,” he said.
“This is really nonsense. The UK is a completely different country with different reasons and a different political consensus."
At the same time, he also sought to stress that the CBB was not promoting reheated Thatcherism, telling PoliticsHome that "there's a role for the state, particularly around industrial policy".
Brown worked in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt during his decade in the foreign office.
The UK's role in the world is an area that he is keen for the think tank to tackle, particularly in Artificial Intelligence, where he claimed Britain faces an "existential threat".
“We're in real danger of becoming a vassal state to the Americans or the Chinese on AI. In particular, when it links to energy policy, because thanks to Net Zero, we’ve slammed our own energy prices up.
“There's an existential threat that the UK goes from traditionally, certainly over the last 300 years, being a country that at least makes the weather... to essentially a country that just takes orders.”
He believes that UK foreign policy has become too focused on what he calls moralising at the expense of advancing the country's actual interests.
“So much of our foreign policy has become projecting out the moral issues of the day, either onto Ukraine or the Arab-Israeli question, rather than actually thinking about these things as particular issues...
"The protests on the street, be it Ukraine or Arab-Israel, are about so much more than the issue. They're about identity politics. And we can't have a foreign policy based on identity politics. It's crazy. We need a foreign policy based on realism and rational interest."
Brown describes himself as a "big fan" of the former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and his "amoral" approach to pursuing American interests abroad.
“I'm a big fan of Henry Kissinger: that stepping back and thinking, okay, what are we actually trying to achieve? In a way, it is amoral, not immoral is vitally important.
“We [the UK] started filtering our foreign policy through the communications lens and moralism, and we need to stop doing so.”
