Anyone considering voting Conservative in the British General Election this week might want to think about their foreign policy. Have a look at the Henry Jackson Society, for instance.  This British neo-conservative project has two Conservative shadow cabinet members as signatories to its statement of principles – Michael Gove and David Willetts. Ed Vaizey is also on there, plus a host of other assorted names, including Labour MPs.

Klaus Dodds and I wrote a piece a couple of years ago that discussed this – “Thinking Ahead: David Cameron, the Henry Jackson Society and the British Neoconservatives”, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol 10, 2008, pp. 347-363.

If you have access through an academic library you can find it here; if not then it’s available here.

Foreign policy has not been a key theme of this campaign, perhaps other than Europe, and the shadow Foreign Secretary has been largely absent. Nonetheless the last line of this piece still seems relevant: “the new British conservatism is not so different from Blair. Given the terrible cost of Blair’s foreign policy that is precisely the reason we should be concerned”.