The rise of the "Red Tory" Phillip Blond
The stock of Liverpudlian Phillip Blond has been rising in recent months.
The Sunday Times was the latest paper to write about the "Red Tory" and his role in trying to make the Conservatives "the party of the poor and mend broken Britain".
It's an interesting read, and if the Tories - as is widely expected - win the next election his ideas are likely to become more and more important. Click HERE to read it, this is a section from the piece:
Blond's work is seminal because it focuses on how social responsibility can be built from the bottom up, providing a real progressive alternative to centralised bureaucratic control," says Oliver Letwin, the Tory MP who is writing the election manifesto. "He is one of the most exciting thinkers around." An insider close to Cameron and George Osborne concurs: "Blond opens up the debate with a completely new, radical, iconoclastic way of thinking. We have a social crisis on our hands; you can't just tinker."
Blond's proposal, a new kind of Conservatism that harked back to "an old Tory dream of Macmillan, Churchill, Disraeli" struck a vital chord. Disillusioned by the shortcomings of the left and its state-run behemoths and the right and its rampant free markets -- both systems that failed the poorest -- he had found a third way: "Red Toryism", an arts and craftsy account of Conservatism that would bring capitalism to the poor, boost local communities and small businesses and enfranchise those on the bottom rungs of society. Such an account, claimed Blond, could mend broken Britain.
Unsurprisingly, his views interested Cameron, who wanted to see if the voters liked them as well, so in no time at all "the sage of Cumbria" was buttonholed by the Demos think tank to head its project on progressive Conservatism. "Rise of the red Tories", an article by Blond in Prospect magazine in February, announced the new mood; suddenly he was the poster boy for a radical new set of Conservative ideals. The stalking horse had been released.
He strikes me as a bit of an enigma. Click HERE to listen to a profile from BBC Radio 4.
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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