This is why I never take anything from the Cato Institute or the Ludwig von Mises institute seriously: they can prattle all they like but so many of their state-hating followers are also science-hating lunatics. The blogosphere is a particular redoubt for such people, just as it is for would-be Nazis: the sort of angry diatribe common to both is attractive to children of a certain age in the United States.

As for Red Toryism, it will never be successful for similar reasons. First, it’s sheep’s clothing and doesn’t represent an actual sheep. The idea that the Tories could ever pull Left isses out from under the feet of the Left is ridiculous since most of Blond’s erstwhile party colleagues have nothing but loathing for his ideas. The recent announcements from Philip Hammon are a case in point. Blond espouses little that is Red: at best he’s aiming for Keynesianism, at worst for the same sort of sloppy rubbish that the Fabians have propagated for a century. There’s nothing new there and it only gets a look in at the moment because the intelligentsia are making their peace with the Tories – as can be seen from the tone of many pieces on Comment is Free.

etc

they seem to have much better mechanisms at shaping the young/indoctrination than other political movements do, eg some boys i know just went on freedom week, 5days of libertarians seminars etc. never heard of anything similar for the centre-left

There’s no chance it can have electoral traction – but it drives the Daily Mail and Taxpayer’s Alliance and that’s poisonous enough

It is a cancer undermining society and we need to challenge it

As for Red Toryism – it’s a great personal marketing campaign – but of no substance at all – there have always been pinko tories – so Philip is another one. So what?

Richard

Scruton’s been writing in this territory for decades. So too Peter Hithchens. The emphasis on the importance of associations between the individual and the state isn’t new and certainly isn’t ‘red’. Anyone whose read Burke on ‘little platoons’ is familiar with it. It’s a pretty powerful current in Tocqueville too.

What might frighten you is that both strains might ally themselves in support of similar policies from very different starting premises – Localism being the most likely point of confluence.

Whilst the Conservative party has been in favour of free trade for a long time, its infiltration by economic arguments from writers not inherently suspicious of the corrupting power of the market, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It’s over stated how much of this New Right thinking influenced Thatcher. If she’d really been so in thrall to Nozic and Friedman I doubt she would have left the health and welfare budgets as she did.

You’re right that Red Toryism is more of an intellectual threat, and in the long term, an electoral threat. For sure, Libertarians will not make into government because their big ideas and policy prescriptions are unelectable.

But in the short term, it’s libertarian discourse which is seeping into the mainstream right, not red tory ideas. The more libertarian ideas weed their ways into Cameron’s inner circle, the further right the political consensus will shift. In terms of actual political outcomes in the short-medium term, I find that deeply worrying for the left because it will mean practical policy decisions which are ever more distant from what we would hope. Sure, it won’t be full-blown libertarianism…but it may well be a lot further to the right than it would be without libertarian ideas in the mix.

Red Tories may, by contrast, one day find themselves in government and they may get themselves there by undercutting the left. But how might they do this, exactly? Well, perhaps part of their appeal will be in offering a more human, compassionate face of conservatism, moving away from the harsh Libertarian-esque sorts of ideas which will lose traction as ordinary people suffer under such an approach to government. Red Tories might offer this human-faced, compassionate approach better than the left, and so gain power that way.

The point is, the rise of Libertarianism in the short term could (though this is of course speculation) facilitate the rise of Red Toryism in the long term.

It may turn out that part of the Red Tory threat needs to be understood in terms of what other sections of the right are getting up to, and how successful they end up being. Perhaps we shouldn’t be looking at this in an either/or dichotomy.

Furthermore, even if the libertarians were to become more prominent, they’d bleed support from the Tories not the left. So Red Toryism remains more of an electoral and intellectual threat.