Red Tory
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Review
'An essential pre-election read.' --GQ Magazine
'Such is the bland predictability of British politics, the territory of managerialised soundbite, that the appetite continues for Blond's intellectual equivalent of a firework display.' --Madeleine Bunting, Guardian
'His thesis makes a potent read as he tracks the history of our modern complacent society, its will crushed between markets and state. It makes sense of Cameron's mantra that there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same as the state.' --Benedict Brogan, Daily Telegraph
'Such is the bland predictability of British politics, the territory of managerialised soundbite, that the appetite continues for Blond's intellectual equivalent of a firework display.' --Madeleine Bunting, Guardian
'His thesis makes a potent read as he tracks the history of our modern complacent society, its will crushed between markets and state. It makes sense of Cameron's mantra that there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same as the state.' --Benedict Brogan, Daily Telegraph
Book Description
Set to be the most controversial, hotly debated and provocative political book of 2010
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting in places,
This review is from: Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How we can Fix It (Paperback)
This is something of a curates egg of a book. The central idea of increasing social capital is not new but is interesting to explore from a Tory perspective. Particular strengths in the book are a Tory critique of Thatcherism and exploration of an earlier Tory tradition in the form of the Primrose League. Shortcomings of Labour in power and the background to the banking crisis are well covered.
The main weakness in the book is a tendency to express what are quite straightforward ideas in over complicated language and to launch into somewhat pompous diatribes. In addition, the chapter on liberalism is particularly weak jumping between the 19th century, 1960s and present day giving no credit for any of the concepts or ideas evolving over this time. In addition, liberalism and socialism get lumped together and barely distinguished. The book concludes with a call for a strong but smaller state and conservatism with a social conscience. By happy coincidence this leads to an endorsement of David Cameron.
27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Genuine Radical,
By
This review is from: Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How we can Fix It (Paperback)
This is a fascinating book and will be of interest to students of philosophy, history, economics and politics as well as the general reader. The first part is a pacy dissection of what is wrong with British society today, and contemporary politics specifically. In analysing present ills Blond offers what amounts to a brief history of post-WWII Britain, and Blond's narrative is full of intriguing insights and asides. The two chapters at the centre of the book, 'The Illiberal Legacy of Liberalism' and 'The Restoration of Ethos', are the most nakedly philosophical. Blond reminds us how a philosophical vision implicitly underlies all political decisions and actions. We need to make these visions explicit in order to better understand and critique them. In this way Blond finds the neo-liberal version of the self to be the root cause of many of our problems. What we need to find is a more positive, realistic and relational understanding of human beings.
The second part of the book offers an account of the kind of society a Red Tory government could promote: a society in which virtue and ethos are restored, in which the state is balanced by a strong civil society, and in which poor communities are 'recapitalised'. For the general reader some of these chapters are harder going as Blond describes in some detail many of the initiatives and policies a Red Tory government could persue. This is not an easy book as it challenges many of the (liberal) assumptions most of us have absorbed from our culture, whether we consider ourselves left, right or centre politically. Many of the ideas certainly need challenging and developing, but I suspect Blond is going to be around for some time, answering his critics, and goading us to think more deeply and creatively about the kind of society we want to live in. Highly recommended.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poor writing, poorer thinking,
By
This review is from: Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How we can Fix It (Paperback)
As a reader interested in history, politics and public policy, I felt it necessary to read this book. Philip Blond is meant to be the next big thing in political philosophy, that was the buzz. On this showing, no he isn't. First, the writing is awful. Not only is Blond verbose and his sentance construction clunky, he does his own ideas a disservice by making them almost impenetrable. He needed a really strict editor, but didn't have one apparently. He makes innumerable bald assertions on highly contentious topics without bothering to support his assertions with even the tiniest shred of evidence or supporting argument. His reading of English history is almost laughably bad. Guilds were a force for good? Has the man read "Wealth of Nations"? He has a general nostalgia for a time of public spiritedness and public virtue, one which I can't recall from my reading of English history. He calls for a return to tradtion- but he leaves out all of the great British traditions- gun ownership, capital punishment, non-communal ownership of property, the monarchy, the aristocracy etc. Which traditions did he have in mind?
He also seems to have read and taken to heart "Small is Beautiful" (along with the communitarian writings of Belloc and Chesterton referred to in other reviews). Unfortunately, the economics of "Small is Beautiful" are not relevant to 21st century Britain or any other country with a large population and developed industrial economy. They are, at best a middle class fashion. Most of us most of the time will need mass produced cars, microwaves, clothes and food, unless we want to live like 17th century peasants. If you don't believe me, visit a country like Zimbabwe where most people are subsistance farmers. I have a big problem with virtue as a public policy. Blond states that what we need is the country to be run by a group of people much like him (middle class, educated, red) who will propagate amongst the hoi polloi the specifics of virtue. It sounds something like the Committee of Public Safety to me... He also does not specify whose definition of virtue we'd be working on, and doesn't have the bravery to reveal that it would be the ones derived from the Bible. Fine with me, but probably not for the Guardian-readers. Would you trust a manual on how to build a bridge written by a cocktail waitress? Then why trust a book about economics and public policy written by a theology lecturer?
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