Red Toryism

This month's Prospect Magazine has an article by Lancaster University's Phillip Blond on Red Toryism.

What is Red Toryism? A view of the world that is right-of-centre on political and social issues but left-of-centre on economics - the opposite of the prevailing political consensus in the UK.

The parties of both right and left, says Blond, have been espousing their own varieties of liberalism:

In respect of liberalism, the left has twice sinned. It has produced a managerial state that has destroyed the old mutualism of the working class. And it has destroyed both middle and working class morality; in the name of permissiveness, it commodified sex and the body, creating the licentious empty pleasure-seeking drones of the late 1960s. This left-libertarianism repudiated all ties of kith and kin and, though it was utopian in aspiration, its true legacy has been the dystopia of divided families, unparented children and the lazy moral relativism of the liberal professional elite. In this sense, the left was right wing years before the right, and it created the conditions for universal self-interest under Thatcher. The current political consensus is left-liberal in culture and right-liberal in economics. And this is precisely the wrong place to be.

It's almost as if a tacit deal was done.

"You can have political correctness, multiculturalism, gay rights and the abolition of corporal punishment in schools if we can have deregulation, tax loopholes, offshoring and outsourcing."

Many of the things that Conservative voters complain about, like political correctness, criminal-controlled no-go areas, Islamic militancy and lack of discipline in schools, took root during the Tory hegemony of the 1980s and 90s. The Tories were too busy bashing the unions, deregulating the economy and selling off state assets to do much about it.

Once Labour got into power, rather than challenging the excesses of barely regulated capitalism, they focussed instead on bringing in more equality legislation and laws against hate speech. As Jackie Ashley said,

[The]New Labour platform, which sounded radical about society and the state – keen on new rights for gay people, keen on devolution, keen on human rights – ......was also fiercely pro-market and pro-City, "intensely relaxed" about people being "filthy rich".

Phillip Blond argues that the Tories' conversion to free market liberalism has been a disaster for conservatism and for many of the party's core supporters.

Instead of holding the middle ground, the state was deployed in favour of the owner and entrepreneur. The benefits of Conservative liberalisation in the late 1980s accrued mainly to the top. The middle class saw its rise in income partly offset by more debt, while the poor sank relatively lower. New Labour did little to reverse these trends. In short, Britain remains stuck with a contested, class-based capitalism that has done great damage to British life.

As I have said before, free market economic policies often lead to things that a lot of conservatives don't like. You'll find plenty of Tory voters in the anti-Tesco campaigns which are gaining support around the country and, like everyone else, most conservatives are furious about the crisis that lightly regulated banks have created.

It has always struck me as odd that a party that advocated greater social responsibility, more discipline in schools and tougher punishment for criminals, also indulged the immoral behaviour of corporations and argued against restrictions on the kindergarten antics of City bankers. Over the last year, more Tory voters have been damaged by the near-criminal excesses of the financial services industry than by the burglars, hoodies and benefit scroungers who are the more usual targets for the party's wrath. 

Blond believes that the financial crisis has destroyed the credibility of freemarket capitalism and has left both the Conservative and Labour parties committed to an ideology that has failed and which is now deeply unpopular with voters. For this reason, he argues, the time is now right for the Conservatives to revive some of their more interventionist traditions that they buried in the 1970s.

The final piece of the puzzle is for Conservatives to break with big business. We must end a model in which competition is reduced to a cartel of vast corporations maximising profits by discouraging competitors and minimising wages by joining with the liberal left to encourage mass immigration. A covert alliance between the liberal left and liberal right has destroyed incomes and identity at the bottom of the scale.

An earlier espousals of what you might call a Red Tory position, which I have quoted from often on this blog, was Ian Fletcher's 2003 article Is Capitalism Conservative Any More? It appeared in the now defunct and deeply unfashionable Right Now! magazine. Phillip Blond might not thank me for saying so but his stance and Fletcher's have many similarities:

To some extent, capitalists used to be conservative simply because society as a whole was conservative, for many reasons including pre-Darwinist religion, the limited franchise, and the limits of technology and capitalists are fundamentally opportunists who will play along with whatever regime is in charge so long as they can make money.

They are quite content to make their peace with the liberal state so long as it doesn't take too large a cut.

Big business has a lot in common with the contemporary Left, as big business and big government both partake of the same bureaucratic administrative spirit that dissolves individual responsibility in favor of anonymous organisations. Like transnational progressives, big companies openly brag about how they have no particular loyalty to any one nation in which they do business.

And Fletcher's conclusion:

Real modernization for Tories would consist in grasping the changed relation of capitalism to conservatism and restoring the latter as their ideological core principle. It's either that, or sell off the country piece-by-piece under the delusion that this is conservative so long as the cheques clear.

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised that, like Ian Fletcher's piece, Phillips Blond's article struck a chord with me.

In the past, I have somewhat jokingly described myself as Old Old Labour, the Labour that was old when Old Labour was new. The party that introduced the National Health Service and free secondary education but which also developed our first nuclear weapons and took us into NATO. It is still not unusual for those with leftwing views on the economy to have rightwing views on crime. Bob Crow, for example, is a trade union class warrior but he also believes in capital punishment. Here's Jackie Ashley again:

Those of us of a certain age remember when the Labour party was crammed with MPs who thought exactly this way. They were far more scathing about "benefit cheats" than any Tory, nervous about immigration and super-keen on old fashioned schools with old fashioned discipline. At the same time, they wanted to nationalise everything that moved and to raise taxes on the rich. They regarded the City as a den of spivs.

To misquote Gene Hunt, she makes that sound like a bad thing.

I'm wary enough of attaching political labels to myself, let alone to other people, but I would tentatively suggest that a few other bloggers have views that might be described as Red Tory. Laban, Wolfie, Esmerelda, Alison and Edwin come to mind.

But whatever the label, be it Old Old Labour, Red Tory or Blue Socialist, Phillip Blond's ideas could well catch the country's mood.

He's certainly got Madeleine Bunting worried: 

Those who are feeling bewildered, buffeted and bossed about by powerful elites could find the central themes of red Toryism very seductive. If Cameron handles it carefully, he could use it to swell the ranks of Tory voters handsomely. You have been warned.

Whether Cameron can deliver a set of politically and socially conservative policies combined with a challenge to big business is debatable. I don't often agree with Polly Toynbee but there is more than a grain of truth in this comment:

The idea that the Tories can reinvent themselves as the nation's saviour from the City culture is bizarre. They are the City, and the City roots for them, however ardently Labour wooed its denizens.

David Cameron and George Osborne most probably went to school and university with some of the people who trashed our economy while raking in six and seven figure bonuses. While Red Toryism might find favour with many people who vote for the Tory party, it unlikely to do so with those that fund it.

Having said that, great ideas have to start somewhere. In his article and his forthcoming book, Red Tory, Phillip Blond has articulated the frustration that many of us feel with the Conservative Party's emphasis on free market economics. Just at the point when deregulation has brought us to the brink of oblivion, both major parties remain wedded to the ideology behind it. If the conversation started by Phillip Blond goes some way towards changing that, he will have done us all a favour.

Update: Philip Blond's article is debated on the Prospect Blog. There are also responses from David Green of Civitas, Catherine Fieschi of Demos, former Tory Party adviser Rupert Darwall and Southampton University's Kieron O'Hara. As you might expect, Blimpish has had his say too in a long post which includes some criticisms of the above criticisms.

Comments

[Moomintroll]

"What is Red Toryism? A view of the world that is right-of-centre on political and social issues but left-of-centre on economics". In other words a corporate state with a repressive social policy. Sounds suspiciously like Fascism to me (or possibly an Iran style theocracy).

[Steve]

Ah yes, that old chestnut.

I meant to mention this in the post - there is always the danger that those who don't like the idea of Red Toryism will adopt the time-honoured left-liberal tactic of shouting 'fascist'.

Is there anything in my post or Phillip Blond's artilce that indicates the desire for a repressive social policy or, for that matter, a corporate state?

[Blimpish]

Moomintroll: free yourself from the 2x2 box of political categories (con, lib, soc, fas)... There are plenty of shades of grey in real societies.

Steve: thanks for the link. In re the tension between the ideas and those who fund the party - it's the same for all parties; even Union funding is now wedded to the social-Left agenda.

I think Blond's main error is to be trapped in old categories on economic policy. I don't see any mileage in protectionism, dirigisme, etc.; but that doesn't close off all of the options.

[Mark]

Philip Blond has the nous to realise that a sea change has occurred, just as it did in the mid 70s. Then the unions were often described as 'holding the country to ransom'- and Tory policy on industrial relations moved strongly to the right as a consequence.
If any group has the country's delicate bits in a vice at the moment, it is the banksters- brazenly telling the rest of us that they'll go offshore if their bonuses are touched (while ignoring the fact that Obama in the US has capped bonuses at those institutions receiving bailout money!). Corporate abuse of power now worries most people more than an overweening state.'Red Toryism' could well prove to be a vote winner at the grassroots, and economic policy should change to reflect these concerns. The problem for the Cameroons however (as you correctly state) is their closeness, as individuals and as donor supplicants, to the villains contributing to our current economic predicament.

[Dave B]

"Just at the point when deregulation has brought us to the brink of oblivion"

Not so.

Badly designed regulation, ineffective regulation, 'has brought us to the brink of oblivion'.

[Wolfie]

Excellent post Steve and yes I'd call that an accurate assessment of my political position given the definitions you've framed.

Thing is, I wouldn't exactly call my opposition to free market fundamentalism in any way anti-capitalist. What the current free-market zeitgeist has ushered in is corporatism, the steroid enhanced bastard progeny of a drunken liaison between communism and robber barony. Conservative capitalism should provide a framework for a rich and diverse business environment which can only function in a healthy society, doesn't much sound like Britain today does it?

[Craig]

Another great post on the subject of "real" conservatism, which doesn't fit well with either state socialism or corporate capitalism.

I concur that a combination of genuine social conservatism with a less laissez-faire attitude to bankers and plunderers is a good thing!

[Esmerelda Weatherwax]

Well I was never going to be Red Sonja, nor Red Adair or Red Rum.
A red tory it will have to be.

[TDK]

I want to discuss the notion that Libertarians desired the city of spivs

we can have deregulation, tax loopholes, offshoring and outsourcing. etc.

If you read any Libertarian theorist you find acknowledgement that there are corrupt businessmen. Think Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugs".

There's no doubt that they exist and part of their corruption is to demand state intervention to support them or protect them. This is what we see today in America with Ford and General Motors. The parties that go along with this come from both left and right. Another example is the corporate grab for subsidies from alternative energy producers and offsets salesman. The left's charge that politicians are in the pockets of business is something with which libertarians have some sympathy

During the 1980s the government denationalised various industries. You portray this as selling off state assets but it's hard to see an asset in British Leyland.

My discomfort from this exercise is not that the state got out of industry but that the proceeds were squandered. Sure some when back to the owners in the form of tax rebates but a large proportion went to increase the size of the social state - outreach workers etc - and the rest to people savvy enough to buy the shares. As someone said to me at the time - we bought them twice; once when they were nationalised and once when they were sold off - the company shares should have been given away to citizens.

Steve describes himself as Old Old Labour and I have some sympathy with that. Once upon a time the Labour party espoused values that would be seen as conservative today. They recognised the distinction between respectable and non-respectable poor. The Labour party supported aspiration and a desire to improve themselves - think workers educational associations; think Bevan teaching himself. They thought that welfare should be based upon qualification, not right - you deserved because you contributed.

That's gone but not because of libertarianism. It died because the roles the Labour movement took upon itself, like adult education, like welfare support were subsumed by the state.

You can date the victory of the new labour over the old to the 1980s - that is true. However those people who came to dominance were educated in the two to three decades before. They were people who had grown up with the welfare state and never known anything different.

The Prospect article calls for Red Conservatism. That strikes me as a demand for a return to the post war consensus. I'm not sure that's viable anymore. The social attitudes that made the welfare state work for the first twenty years are gone.

They were attitudes born of an earlier era, when the welfare state was a utopian dream.

[G. Tingey]

Sounds right to me....

Between them, since Eden (the worst PM since Lord North ....)
The Tories and Labour have conspired to cock-up (if you see what I mean) ...
Defence, Education, Transport, and now, finally the economy.

We can't defnd ourselves, the education system isn't interested in merit or ability, the transport system is geared for cheap fuel and flying everywhere, and road-building profits to "our friends, and now a combination of Thatcher's destruction of society (which didn't exist -rememebr?) in pursuit of short-term gain, and Brown's passive acquiescence in the same have now finally landed us in it.

People are starting to turn to the BNP (ugh) because there's no-one else, which is NOT a pleasant prospect.

[alison]

I think Blair was a red Tory but 9/11 railroaded him and everyone's focus. In fact Labour unlike any other bunch in history has achieved bugger all advancement domestically in its tenure. The Tories had to break the unions and free the market up for us to survive. That was their calling and thank you Maggie. Labour then squandered so much of the economic success they were handed with sod all but as I mentioned 9/11 maybe changed our focus and concentration til it was too late. But Blair did turn them into a free market movement finally. Can you imagine Labour without Thatcher or Blairs influence and where we would be at? Holllly shit. Michael Foot's lot anyone?!

And that's where it all went tits up for the Tories who have flailed around lost for so long as a result.

I enjoyed the article and nodded at a lot of it throughout. Especially that nod to social libertarianism, comodifying sex etc.

I am still picking through the article. I would love for British politics to be facing a new 'turn'. I believe the article mentioned Disraeli and likened this section of history to his tenure? That would be refreshing. And yes I would describe myself as a red Tory ;)