THE THING NEITHER RIGHT NOR LEFT CAN ACCEPT...:

The Tories have the answers, but not the strength to deliver: David Cameron and George Osborne are creating a new Tory philosophy. Now all they have to do is revolutionise the party (Will Hutton, 2//07/10, The Observer)

[A]part from the odd tract, there is no canon of red Tory ideas from which to borrow. Liberal Conservatives don't have a John Rawls, Maynard Keynes, Joe Stiglitz, Amartya Sen or Michael Sandel to inform their thinking. They have to make it up themselves with most of their natural supporters sullen or sceptical and an over-powerful, bullying right-wing media whose default position is unthinking populism. Little wonder that it is not the most sure-footed of enterprises. David Cameron in the last six months has managed both to claim that the state is the problem and later that a fit-for-purpose state is part of the solution – and that spending cuts must be deep and early, but not, it seems, at first particularly extensive.

Last week, Osborne offered his most ambitious attempt to set out what a liberal Conservative government may do in office economically: "A new economic model, eight benchmarks for Britain". It is a curious document, reflecting the half-formed nature of the philosophy he and Cameron claim and their own uncertainties about what they dare do and what might work. There is some clear-sighted analysis, not least that as the sources of economic growth in the decade up to 2007 – the credit-fuelled bubble economy and rapidly rising public spending – are plainly over, the country has to migrate to a new model of higher investment, saving and exports. For Conservatives, this requires a red Tory approach and some ideas are even signalled. But in area after area, the wannabe liberal Conservative interventionists shrink at the last.

...is that both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair were Red Tories and that the body of ideas that David Cameron needs to run on is visible in the econo-politics of everyone from Augusto Pinochet to George W. Bush.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 7, 2010 10:44 AM