Introducing 'Red Toryism'

(Image from Prospect Magazine - to accompany a forthcoming feature from Philip Blond).

I've just returned from the launch of the new Progressive Conservatism Project - hosted by the Demos think tank and directed by Philip Blond.

In a sign of the seriousness with which the Tory leadership is taking the project David Cameron has just addressed the gathering.  The Tory leader's speech contained little that is new but the PCP has attracted Greg Clark MP, David Willetts MP, Daniel Finkelstein and Zac Goldsmith (among others) to its advisory board.

I'm still struggling to quite understand Mr Blond's 'Red Toryism' (as he describes it) but pasted below are some extracts from pieces he has written for The Guardian's Comment is free over recent months...

Challenging centralisation, monopolisation and speculation: "The small governing elite of the party feels that this is the right way to go, but they lack a final intellectual synthesis and they also fear antagonising Thatcherites, who still constitute a sizeable slice of the party and a majority of the branch activists. But the unprecedented crisis of the world economy precipitated by the debt-leveraged collapse of free-market extremism has given the Tories a real opportunity to develop. They should worry less and carry the logic of their own civic philosophy through to its conclusion, for it could produce a genuinely critical account of the crisis and an alternative to the left/right neoliberal fundamentalism of the last 30 years. For instance, the crisis of contemporary capitalism results from the congruence and culmination of three dominant trends: centralisation, monopolisation and speculation. Despite rightwing ideological claims, unregulated capital does not diffuse equitably among all market participants. The centralisation of money and power is the foundation of monopoly, and the precondition for unrestrained speculation. Thus the Conservative critique of centralisation means an end of cartel domination and a limit to inappropriate speculation." (21 August 2008)

The Left is wedded to to atheism, statism and individualism: "That it is the Conservatives rather than Labour who now wish to restore the social, is an indication that a more radical and ancient conservatism is taking shape. The left, in its current formulation, is hopelessly wedded to atheism, statism and individualism. In part this is because it was created by the French Revolution and is currently unable to think beyond and before the division between left and right." (6th October 2008)

Conservatism needs to break free from "neo-Thatcherism": "Cameron's revivified "one nationism" is after all what lies behind the party's revival. Both he and Osborne require a Clause 4 moment. They need to break with the economic logic of neo-Thatcherism, censure it as an approach that has only served the interests of the top 10% and stand behind their nascent alternative: a conservatism that inveighs against monopoly interests and restores markets, power and wealth to all parts of the community." (20th November 2008)

Stopping repossesion of homes: "In future, all claims for home repossession will have to go through a new, fair and binding procedure that – provided that some equitable payment is made – people will be allowed to remain in their homes. This will provide a floor to the market and ensure that no firesale of property takes place – unlike America, where each new auction drives prices ever lower." (27th September 2008)

We need more than a minimum wage: "We will replace the minimum wage with a living one – as Boris Johnson has already done in London. There will no more minimum wage in Britain, but a living wage for all. We will partially fund this by removing tax credits for the poor, as they are nothing more than a state subsidy for low-wage employers. Why should the state subsidise the wages supermarkets pay to their staff?" (27th September 2008)

Economics and finance needs to be localised: "Local economies that developed regional and city based sources of credit (what I have elsewhere called patriotic capital) would be far less exposed to international financial crises, while being able to develop regional export expertise to diversify our economy, as silicon valley as done in the US, or as Germany has done with advanced manufacturing, or Italy with its luxury goods sector. The conservative idea for a reinvention of guilds and conservative cooperatives is then uniquely prescient – since this would generate income that remained within the locality." (19th September 2008).

Tim Montgomerie

Comments

[GB£.com]

Red Tory = Blue Labour?

[HF]

It does not look very Conservative. With Willetts who wants to build houses on green fields and is against grammer schools, Greg Clarke who quotes Toynbee and Finkelstein who is against cuts, we have a very wet bunch.

[David Lindsay]

Radical Orthodoxy at the heart of what thinks that is going to be the next government. Who'd have thought it? And just as well that the Thatcherite flame-keepers are among all the other inherent, inescapable atheists who have never heard of it. Ayn Rand or Leo Strauss it certainly isn't. Thank God.

[Iain]

"we have a very wet bunch"

Yes a wet fluffy bunch of nothing, perhaps a better label for Cameron's Conservative party is the Candyfloss party, a stick of fluffy, pink, sickly sweet, candyfloss.

[asquith]

What utter SHITE.

& I'm not even a Tory, in fact I am left-wing, but even so.

[michael mcgough]

Oh dear!

[Shaun Bennett]

"Cameron's revivified "one nationism" is after all what lies behind the party's revival."

Well thats what the left of the party would like us to believe but the evidence is very flimsy to say the least. The party has NOT become so popular that it is sweeping all before it. It is a sort of 'default popularity' in that we are mostly popular because Labout is UNpopular.

And it is a shakey popularity that will melt away like the summer snow if we aren't careful, or if Labour ever recovers. Cameron has delivered us no great Conservative revival, he is more like a bad illusionist who is as surprised as the rest of us when the tricks actually work! But when they do work it is more through fluke than anything else.

This 'project' is no more than a programme to put us into office on a wave of apathy, and then to carry out anti-Conservative policies when we are there.

All the polls say that many people don't really want to vote Conservative with great enthusiasm, but they will to get rid of this lot who are even worse. Is that really a prospectus for government? And is it really worth doing if there is going to be no difference once we get there?

No, I propose the alternative theory; that the party is being held back by the Cameron 'project' and that we would be doing far better if we took a courageous, radical-and yes more Thatcherite-stance on the big issues.

Don't let us be told that we are in the middle of a great Conservative revival; the truth is that we should be doing so much better. It is the apathetic revival, and Team Cameron are failing the party and the country by being so weak and cautious.

[Andrew Lilico]

I am reminded of my piece on "Five Conservative principles for managing the new Socialist settlement":

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2008/10/conservative-pr.html

- Personal love and justice vs collective love and fairness.
- State religion as the inspirer of morality
- Pragmatism and compromise
- The strength, integrity and personal substantiality of our leaders
- The quality of our nation

I wonder what Mr Blond would think of Conservatism modelled along these lines?

[Susan]

Sounds rather wishy-washy. Perhaps it's time for a breakaway Party to form to the right of Cameron and his fluffy bunnies.

[Shaun Bennett]

With reference to my above comment, I just want to add that the left of the party will hit back 'well the right-wing agenda didn't work after 1997 did it?'.

Well I have to say to them that NOTHING would have worked after 1997, and I dare say that the Cameron agenda after 1997 would have gone down even more of a bomb than the right wing message.

[UKIP defector]

So when is David Cameron going to address the Institute of Economic Affairs or Adam Smith Institute? He has failed to do so in the three years since his election as Tory leader. Cameron clearly prefers to address left-wing think tanks such as Demos and confirms his social democratic politics.

Blue Labour or Red Tories - take your pick! If you want to vote for true Conservatives, support UKIP rather than the Notting Hill socialists. Principled resistance is more important than Blairite triangulation, political expediency or the Cameroon abuse of state power.

[DCMX]

Cameron takes delight in offending the right whenever he's ahead in the opinion polls.

[David Lindsay]

There's nothing "fluffy" about it.

Phillip edited the original volume 'Post-Secular Philosophy', contributed to 'Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology', remains at the very heart of Radical Orthodoxy (of which, by the way, I am not uncritical), and can clearly now get Cameron (who, even if wrongly, assumes himself to be the next Prime Minister) to come and speak at his conference, much to the chagrin of the Thatcherite flame-keepers in parts of the blogosphere.

If the Dawkinsites understood any of this, then there would be bedlam. RO is far more anti-secular than, say, the Vardy Foundation, or Opus Dei. And they went ballistic over New Lbaour and just plain Labour ties to those two.

[Iain]

"Cameron takes delight in offending the right whenever he's ahead in the opinion polls."

Then his poll ratings collapse!

[Westminster Wolf]

DCMX is so correct.

The Cameroons hate the grassroots and picking fights with us is part of their attempts to win over the Guardian class.

[Iain]

"Perhaps it's time for a breakaway Party to form "

Susan well there is UKIP or the English democrats to chose from ...

http://www.englishdemocrats.org.uk//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=28

[John]

Has anybody who has commented read the speech?

[Tony Sharp]

A couple of observations about some of Blond's quotes:

"The small governing elite of the party feels that this is the right way to go, but they lack a final intellectual synthesis and they also fear antagonising Thatcherites, who still constitute a sizeable slice of the party and a majority of the branch activists."

Frustrating to see. The party should not have an elite, let alone one that appears to give some people an indication that it is working to overcome the wishes of the members. The leadership should be accountable and represent the membership, not dictate to it.

"Cameron's revivified "one nationism" is after all what lies behind the party's revival."

Yes, the party has changed. But is this 'revival' being measured on the basis of opinion polls? If anyone believes the polls are a measure of the party's revival or a reflection of our popularity, rather than largely an indictment of Labour's unpopularity, then we have cause for concern.

[Henry Mayhew - Ukipper]

Although some of this is dangerous, unaffordable, twaddle, as posted above, they are on the right lines with the idea of 'conservative co-operatives'. But why don't they call them mutual societies and read their real-life Victorian stories? Don't they realise that these were killed off by the unfunded pension introduced by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in 1908?

See, Sally et al. I do not just criticise even when faced with an open goal. I will let Tory party members tear themselves up about the twaddle while I praise the good bits.

[David_at_Home]

Please can someone enlighten me what is "One Nation" about the joint Labour/Tory/LibDem policy of flooding the country with immigrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere in order to keep the wages low for working classes and to provide the elite with cheap servants?

UKIP is now the party of "One Nation".

[james cullis]

is thhere no true TORY on ere. soMe of Us aare dAM RIGHT HOSTILE TO THE POST-1789 ORDER. CAMERONIN CORRECT TO BE HOSSTLE TO THE NEOLIBERAL THATCEHRTITE AGENDA ILESS CHAMPION REAL CONSERVATISM LONG LIVE BURKEAN CONSERVATISM

[Iain]

David_at_Home , yes, multiculturalism would appear to be the antithesis of one nationism, but then the loony left are known for their contradictions so its better not to ask them to explain.

[rugfish]

To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all.

1 Corinthians Chapter 9 ( 22 )

I knew I'd heard it somewhere previously !!

Will he be offering us a King David this year or will he be standing on the ground a bit with the people who actually vote for him?

Socialism is stupid and we've had enough of it already. We need CHANGE.

That's unless he can explain how on earth he will manage to accomplish communal decision making with umpteen hand picked civic locals scattered around the country all wondering what to do because the European Union has already done them out of a job on 80% of it.

Does he not get it ?

EVERY 'GOD' damned thing starts with pulling ourselves out of the European pit of social neo-liberalism and "restoring" what we had before we gave it away.

Also, saying as he's on about all manner of godly things with his I'm your leader and all things to all men malarky, can he explain what he intends to give as a response to the other Messiah over the Atlantic who's already made his own views plain about how David Cameron should run the country as clearly his opinion conflicts somewhat.

All we need is another box of Euro-Fudge and half of us will leave the party !!!

Other than that I agree with quite a bit of what he says except this nonsense about thinking up a different economic system when the other one was working perfectly fine until BROWN ( the no-good for anything Chancellor ) changed it.

Rant over.

[James D]

The repossession of homes one is a fairly simple one to solve if the focus is upon minimizing distress to the victims of the recession and maximizing social cohesion. The sort of fair, binding procedure I would suggest is:

1) The lender must declare its intention to wind up the mortgage to the local authority, specifying the value of the mortgage when sold and the value of the mortgage on that day.
2) The local authority must then offer 70% of the lower of those two values to be taken as full and final payment of the mortgage, with the remainder permanently written off. This will deter lenders from repossessing unless it is the last resort.
3) Blacklisting people is counterproductive: in a recession, it fails to reflect risk with any socially acceptable level of accuracy, and it will merely delay the recovery. It should therefore be made illegal, with the only material considerations for lending being income, assets, liabilities, and time-to-retirement.
4) The people dwelling in the house repossessed (either the owners or their tenants) then become council tenants, with the normal rights to quit their tenancy or to buy.

Such a process would avoid irresponsible behaviour by lenders, allow people to stay in their homes, and provide a natural balance to the right-to-buy in creating the successful, diverse neighbourhoods that the planning professionals tell us are so good.

[meli]

well I really could just weep. Thatcher is now a communist or what? What exactly is that picture trying to imply may I ask? No don't tell me it doesn't matter. I for one have had enough of all this (new labour, common purpose, demos, NWO, progressive whatever, neo what's it) and I'm gonna just go back to being a house wife oblivious to politics because it's obvious in the end we are pawns on a chess board and we will get there by hook or by crook wherever the heck THERE is.

[resident leftie]

Two oxymorons in one day? You've surpassed yourselves.

[Tynemouth Tory]

Rugfish spots the quote 1 Corinthians Chapter 9 ( 22 ).

My response would be John 11:35.

[james cullis]

the problem with Thatchrism is i is LIBERALISM CAMERON IS RETURNING TO TRUE TORYISM

THE PROBEN WIT UKIP IS THEY ARE LIBERTARIAN AND DONT CARE ABOUT ORDER TRUE CONERVATISM LIKE CAMERONISM HAS THE CONCEPT OF ORDER AT ITS HEART

[rugfish]

Rugfish spots the quote 1 Corinthians Chapter 9 ( 22 ).

My response would be John 11:35.

Posted by: Tynemouth Tory | January 22, 2009 at 18:04

Ha ha ha ha ha !

I looked it up.
Very succinct Tynemouth Tory.

[David Lindsay]

And Burke, James Cullis, had roots among the Irish Catholic gentry. The Red Tory tradition is that of those who were never completely convinced of the legitimacy of the state created in 1688, or, therefore, of its Empire or of that Empire's capitalist ideology.

Mediated by, in, through and as Catholicism, High Churchmanship (subsequently including Methodism and then also Anglo-Catholicism), Congregationalism, the Baptist movement, Quakerism and other things, all of them hotbeds of Jacobite sentiment, it long outlasted the death of the Stuart cause as such with Cardinal York in 1807.

And it went on to produce, among much else, the (Tory-led) opposition to the slave trade, the demands for (largely Tory-delivered) extensions of the franchise and other political reforms, the Labour Movement's amelioration of economic and social injustices precisely in order to prevent a Marxist revolution, and the opposition to the Boer and First World Wars.

[RichardJ]

"the unprecedented crisis of the world economy precipitated by the debt-leveraged collapse of free-market extremism has given the Tories a real opportunity to develop."

If the free-market extremists had had their way we wouldn't have had a Central Bank keeping interest rates too low.

"For instance, the crisis of contemporary capitalism results from the congruence and culmination of three dominant trends: centralisation, monopolisation and speculation"

The state encourages these by subsidising public transport, granting patents, subsidising R&D, piling red tape on business and generally distorting what a real free market would look like:

http://members.tripod.com/kevin_carson/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Chapter3.pdf

[rugfish]

Look, if he's gonna go all religious on us can he at least become a Puritanical Country Healing take no nonsense, put it all back where it was TORY please, rather than all this "progressive" nonsense?

Someone give the bloke a nudge will ya.

[Andrew S]

Face it, the right is wrong.

[james cullis]

WHATS UR POINT IM JST SAYIN CAMERON IS A BURKEAN CONSERATIVE

[Tanuki]

Who is this 'Blond' person? He sounds very much like the stereotype of Blondes as vacuous airheads.

And this "progressive conservative project" is something all Right-thinking individuals should run a mile from if it's got Zac Goldsmith on the board - in the current economic circumstances we can't afford 'watermelon [green on the outside, red on the inside] environmental nonsense.

Equally, the suggestion that "we need more than a minimum wage" is completely at odds with the guy's complaint about statism. Surely things like a minimum wage are perfect examples of top-down statism in action - a classic Leftist approach. Yet he also knocks 'individualism' as a sign of the Left - I consider individualism [better known as self-reliance or 'doing my thing, making my choices and not expecting anyone else to pay for it' - as one of the founding principles of Conservatism.

Clearly, this 'Blond' needs a new hairstyle - if only to conceal his lack of mental acuity.

[Geoff Middleton]

The Left is wedded to...individualism

Really?
And Zac Goldsmith is there, is he?
Nuff said.
Abominable.
Not surprised, though.

[Lindsay Jenkins]

Worth reading the wiki entry for Demos at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demos_(UK_think_tank)

I doubt its moved far from its Marxist roots.

So who is paying for this project? I see last year Demos laid off staff - was rumoured to have financial problems.

Is money from the Conservative Party part of the solution? I think we should be told.

[David Lindsay]

In the heartlands of the old party of working-class patriots and social conscience toffs, of temperance Methodists and traditional Catholics, turnout last time was in some cases as low as one in three.

If, as is quite clear ffom this thread, the Tories don't want those votes, then their owners need not imagine that they have nowhere else to go - http://www.britishpeoplesalliance.org.uk

[Pulvertaft]

Now, I've sat in on a few university tutorials in my time and waffled thus with deluded troglodyte dwellers resident up their own colons. The ageing smuglies of 1968 and the Socialist Workers who never would (work). I have spliffed up, half-cut on white cider, as deeply inhaling fellow adolescents wafted snippets of similarly trite Utopian self-regard but.

This is the Conservative Party. We do things differently here. Don't we?

We fix broken things, we mend ill-conceived things, we use words such as pragmatic and provide the necessary line in the sand beyond which the self-appointed liberal intelligensia dare not step.

Most of all we stare things in the face that are staring us in the face. From lack of social mobility being a direct consequence of aspiration to the lowest common denominator in education to the absence of coherent national identity and the concomitant sense of mutual respect and purpose as the direct and irrefutable cause of our 'broken' society.

To embrace the boll#cks that brought us her in the first place, Messrs 'Greg Clark MP, David Willetts MP, Daniel Finkelstein and Zac Goldsmith (among others) to its advisory board' is an abdication of duty and statement of betrayal to Our party.

[Jake Bryan]

Frankly that all sounds awful- entailing, essentially, a return to full blooded socialism under not the Labour party, but the Tories. It strikes me that Mr Blond is reading rather too much into Cameron's reforms- which have always seemed somewhat over-hyped to me.

As a not particularly right wing member of the Conservatives, I could not vote for a party which advocated a 'living wage' (a ludicrous idea militant trade unionists during the 1970s would have balked at, and the introduction of which would, single-handedly, entirely negate Thatcher's reforms). Nor would I be happy voting for anyone who believed, absurdly, that only massive scale government provides prosperity for those outside the ranks of the rich (which appears to be Blond's argument).

I thought ''progressive Conservatism'' was, essentially, the idea that left wing means to achieve progressive goals had failed and thus the right would have more success. Not wholesale adoption of Labour's 1983 election manifesto.

[rugfish]

Posted by: Lindsay Jenkins | January 22, 2009 at 18:34

You're talking to a brick wall of silence Lindsay. Don't eat your heart out over it, they all know about it and more, and have failed to act on any of it despite half the country being aware. We're like ducks in a shooting gallery here that's all.

[Alan S]

Iain Martin @ Telegraph:

"Demos claims to have identified a species called "Red Tories". This is hokum; no such beast exists unless you count Quentin Davies."

lol

[james cullis]

des any share my coserns about thee post 1789 order f so ths shuld b umusic your earss f not then go to those liberals in ukip

[Ken Stevens]

Just as we get within striking distance of a General Election...

Just as the Tories show the first inklings of a coherent set of policies...

Just as we're in the middle of an economic quagmire and yearn for stability & recovery....

....some freethinkers throw everything into the melting pot.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

[james cullis]

holw can you NOT see this As truly conservative peomotig scial rresponsibiit againg a stupid fundaentalist bblief in markets

[RichardJ]

David Lindsay, you seem to want to return us to the failed socialist economics of the pr1979 era and boss around by telling us how much we can drink, gamble etc.

I want a government that buggers off and leaves me alone.

[RichardJ]

"holw can you NOT see this As truly conservative peomotig scial rresponsibiit againg a stupid fundaentalist bblief in markets"

How are you allowed to use a keyboard when you can't even type? Are you drunk?

[james cullis]

COMMENT OVERWRITTEN

[CityBoy]

I must say, Richmond Park is one of those seats were I almost hope we lose.

Better the enemy without than the enemy within, and Goldsmith has got "trouble" written all over him in 200 point font.

[The Bishop swine]

Red Tory = Blue Labour?

Its imperial purple and it may well be the next big thing (again)

[Steve Tierney]

Oh. My. God.

[Graeme Archer]

Some of the CiF columns quoted by Tim, especially the first one, do chime somewhat. I have a feeling this goes a bit deeper than the Warholesque photo at the top. Making a cult out of a person is, well, not enough. And measuring thoughts against their inferred departure from the inferred norms of that person, still less so. (Unless the person's name is 'Iris' :-)).

[Steve Foley]

Red Toryism? What next? Catholic Orangemen? A Chapter of the KKK for African-Americans?

I have no time for the hard line Market Forces types who post here but on social issues I am on what would have been the old Right. The last thing the Tory Party needs in the final 12 to 18 months to a General Election is another faction and infighting.

Finally I agree with City Boy and if Green Millionaire Zac Goldsmith is involved I certainly don't want to know about this!

[dcj]

I am sorry Mr Lindsay doesn't accept the settlement of 1688. Just for the record, James II lost the throne by (among other things)

Claiming the right to suspend laws
Claiming the right to authorise individuals to break laws
Ignoring Parliament and ruling without its consent
Imprisoning people for disagreeing with him - the Seven Bishops (you'd have been in trouble, Bishop Swine)

James II also claimed to want "religious freedom" - but how long it would have lasted once he'd forced England back to Rome is debatable (see Edict of Nantes, Revocation of)

So what was overthrown in 1688 was an attempt to bring in continental-style absolutism and suppress personal liberty. (Why do I think there are certain similarities with today?)

Now if Red Toryism means favouring these policies, no COnservative should have anything to do with it. What Mr Lindsay seems to want is the masses of people working away in imitation jobs (it wasn't Mrs T who ended the old industrial heartland, Mr Lindsay, it was the market - and even the Soviet Union found you can't buck the market) and being content with their lot, singing the missing verse of "All things bright and beautiful" (The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, He made them high and lowly and ordered their estate) and being pathetically grateful for whatever crumbs the small ruling elite throw their way.

No thanks.

Thank God we had Mrs Thatcher - I just wish we could see a clear successor. I hope Mr Cameron will prove worthy, but as you all know I have my doubts.

[South West London Activist]

It’s not Zac who is “trouble” – but South West London’s Yellow Peril. Indeed, they are expensive trouble especially the tax-guzzling regime of the Banana Republic of Richmond. The Yellow Peril MPs aren’t much better than their council comrades, and that includes ‘Brutus’ Cable who is a two-faced hypocrite who is prone to back-stabbing his party’s leaders. Time to give South West London’s Yellow Peril the proverbial kick up the ballots.

[Tristan Downing]

"The left, in its current formulation, is hopelessly wedded to atheism..."

Grow up. Neither the left nor the right is wedded to atheism nor religion. Tory vaules, new or old do not come from scripture and so Conservatives are not hopelessly wedded to religion either. Besides, how could being wedded to rationality and mature human thinking be a hopeless thing? For the Tories and the whole of humanity to progress, detaching from primitive dark age beliefs is the only option. It is not something wedded to either left or right.

[comstock]

"We will replace the minimum wage with a living one – as Boris Johnson has already done in London. There will no more minimum wage in Britain, but a living wage for all. "

Bloomin' heck

Is this really gonna be party policy? This is a massive shift if so.

[Lindsay Jenkins]

rugfish @19.24

Thank you for some hope: ducks in a shooting gallery pop up again.

[Edward Huxley]

I wonder how Zac Goldsmith came to get involved. Could it have been his money?

The PPC for Richmond Park has to overturn a Libdem majority of 3,731. I wouldn`t bet on it. If people want Libdem policies they will probably stick to the real thing.

[Malcolm Dunn]

I can't ,in all honesty, really claim to understand this at all. I rather tend to agree with Simon Chapman's analysis on Centre Right that this might be an attempt by Demos to keep themselves in business after the defeat of the Labour Gov't.

[pp]

If Demos want to do something useful, they should get behind Daniel Hannan's and Douglas Carswell's 'The Plan'.

http://stores.lulu.com/renewbritain

Seems a mighty fine starting point.

[Steve Foley]

"I wonder how Zac Goldsmith came to get involved. Could it have been his money?

The PPC for Richmond Park has to overturn a Libdem majority of 3,731. I wouldn`t bet on it. If people want Libdem policies they will probably stick to the real thing."
============================================

Too true! In those areas the Lib-Dem MPs are sure to have come out against the Heathrow Third Runway and can claim some legitimacy on their part for this as their party was "Green" before the Greens, whereas the Tory Party for the most part is shouting "Me Too!" in the hope of regaining those seats at any cost. I would think that any electors with some intelligence would see through this cynical and opportunist charade and stick with what they have got. I can see seats such as Surbiton, Sutton, Richmond Park and Twickenham staying as they are, and John Mc Donnell of Mace fame holding on too.

[David Bouvier]

Hmmm... Catholic social authoritarianism basically. I have tried reading his theology stuff, and even though I have read quite a bit of theological tosh in the past his is bordering on schizophrenic word-salad.

Boris decided on a salary policy for the people who worked for him and who were paid from his budget. Normal management decision.

Deciding that everyone should get a "living wage" (for doing nothing? for doing antisocial things? for showing up in a registered employment location even if there is no work to do? for what exactly?) is utterly insane.

Or if you are not allowed to employ people below the "living wage" then there will be mass unemployment of the young, less skilled etc and massive social unrest.

I think I will start calling Blond a "Blue Harman" rather than a "Red Tory".

[Paul B]

This is remarkably poor. I can't believe that it's taken seriously. Despite the faux-academic writing style, this is little more than a restatement of 1970's High Toryism. The consistent false parodying of Thatcherite views, whilst proclaiming a new dawn of thinking - when all that's actually stated is a bizarre brand of localism and old-fashioned Toryism - is a pretty thin gruel so far as an actual argument goes. Reads like a Private Eye parody.

[Bexie]

The problem with this approach is that it drives people away from the Tories, who cannot assume that people on the right/ libertarian will vote for them regardless

I think we would get far more milage by being the party that champions individual liberty, small business and gives real help to the poor rather than using them as a tool to make jobs for the boys in welfare care.

[chris southern]

A living wage is a joke, it's the cost of living that needs sorting out.
Reduction of taxes, massive reduction in the size of the state will be a big step in sorting this problem.

Global warming (climate change) is to be polite, bollocks.
The scientists (who are a very loud minority) who support it use flawed statistics, and refuse to show all of their research data.
It's just a tax and people know it.
What it has highlighted is the amount/type of crap we throw away and that's what we need to sort out as well as the type of polution we pump into the atmosphere.

Instead of panicking and trying to meet dead lines set out by beurocratic muppets it's time we were grown up about things and made steady and simple steps towards the solution.

All of the populist talk of being more socialist to appease more people is utter crap.
Be brutaly honest with people, get us out of the EU and start to mend this country.
The banking system needs changing as well, this pyramid scheme needs to be replaced whith an old style of system where they are not allowed to create credit from nothing, helping to debase the currency (this needs to be done worldwide as debasing a currency harms the people as it's the main cause of inflation)

In general, get a grip Conservative party, borrow maggies balls and make some real sense and statements instead of playing the popular game.

The age of acting like children and not taking responsibility is over, it's time for adults to inherit the earth once again.
Nanny is no longer needed, and neither is the thought police.

sorry about the rant folks, just feeling more grumpy than usual today.

[matt]

hey, these ideas ar very similar to some other ideas like the philosophy of distributism, or multicapitalism or binary economics. if anyone is interested they should research these things. i think he is on he right track with some of the points there.

[The Bishop Swine]

The trouble with a wet revolution is that the right always want it diluted, even when the recognise the truth of what is proposed.
Rather than joining with the Peep O Day Boys, they oppose in a knee jerk manner often (so it seems to me). Most of us reconise that the wet wing has the moral high ground.

[The Bishop swine]

UKIP is now the party of "One Nation".

No we are the Party of "One Nation", UKIP should come home and prepare to govern.
We can win this Election UKIP cannot its time to build bridges.

[james cullis]

whats r point bishp swine

[James Maskell]

Damn it, Cameron. I was so close to actually considering coming back to the Party then he come up with some absolute guff towards the end that ruined it. He did the same thing at Conference. Im looking for reasons to rejoin not reasons not to.

[Jack Stone]

The trouble with Cameron is that when the polls go up he goes to the left and when they go down he goes back to the right.
Personally I believe that Cameron is a right-winger who believes that the way to get elected is to try and be all things to all men.
If he does get elected I suspect that he will end up being far more right-wing than many on this site suspect as I think that rather being a genuine person of change he is in fact a fraud trying to get elected on a false ticket.

[realtory]

Yuk. Pity the Tories are currently under occupation from a clique who buy all this.

[SG]

I have read this article three times. Each time I have been left with an even bigger headache.

[Felix Bungay]

If the left is wedded to individualism, then I'm with the left! Nothing scares me more than this idea of Red Toryism, with its big state policies. The Conservatives need to be the party of individual liberty, and the preserve the rights of the individual over an oppressive state. The conservatives need to look to David Davis, not Mr Blond. Red Toryism seems to be a guise for modern day Totalitarianism. Big state, oppression of the individual, against capitalism. A rose by another other name....

[Ross Warren]

Felix I can understand were your coming from but the above article is extremely misleading maybe deliberately so, or is this what happens when a person starts talking about something without doing the reading? I will not bother to set anyone straight again but and for the last time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Tories

Has a decent (if short) article that explains what this very old term really means.

[fussball]

Gute Arbeit hier! Gute Inhalte.

[Mr Angry]

Well Jack Stone should know all about being a fraudulent person, it takes one to know one.

However, Labour trolls apart, there are some good things in this Red Toryism lark, but you do have to wade through an awful lot of the brown stuff to find them.

Ultimately either we are conservative or we are NuLabour in drag, I know which I prefer and it doesn't involve me needing to cross dress.