Second, while the parties inhabit opposite wings of the political spectrum, they have a surprising amount in common. On civil liberties, tax reform, education reform and decentralizing the political system — the keystones of the Tories’ “Big Society” package — they share a philosophical commitment that puts the individual before the state and a political belief in the value of Edmund Burke’s “little platoons”: families, neighborhood associations, charities, churches and the like. ~Alex Massie

Massie has been confident all along that Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have this common ground, and I am inclined to agree with him, which is why I think Prof. Fox exaggerates the Liberal resistance to a Red Toryish agenda. There are policy differences that could blow up the coalition, and there are issues where the two parties are diametrically opposed, but the things Massie mentions possibly represent the glue that could keep the coalition from fracturing. My agreement with Massie is also why I find expressions of sympathy for Cameron and Blond among “reformist” conservatives here in the U.S. a bit puzzling.

On the whole, “refomist conservatives” are interested in re-directing the welfare state to what they argue are conservative ends. Decentralization as such holds relatively little interest for them, and to the extent that it impedes the implementation of national domestic policy proposals decentralization is unwelcome. This may be too sweeping of a generalization, but on the whole my impression is that “reformist” conservatives may or may not have Tocquevillian instincts but almost all of them prefer Hamiltonian means. Much of “reformist” conservatism is concerned with providing an alternative agenda for an increasingly centralized system, rather than with the broad distribution of power that Blond is proposing. “Reformist” conservatism for the most part means more of the bureaucratic, managerial state apparatus that Blond strongly criticizes and opposes. As creative as some “reformists” can be, they are ultimately tinkering around the edges of a neoliberal consensus that Blond flatly rejects.

In his inaugural speech launching the think tank ResPublica last November, Blond made this statement:

So, as a radical pro-market thinker, I would like to see genuinely rather than putatively free markets and systems of economic exchange. But to achieve free markets we must overcome their neo-liberal construal. Why? Because markets conceived on a neo-liberal model require the bureaucratic and authoritarian state. Why? Because if the economic actor is conceived as purely self-interested, as obeying no external codes, as living only by the internal dictate of his/her will and volition, then this actor needs regulation and tight external control. Otherwise, they will violate the rights of others who, also conceived on a similar aggressive model, will seek to do the same. Something external to this model is required in order to police this model, something with absolute power and authority: the state. Thus, neo-liberalism or market fundamentalism requires all the bureaucracy and external management of the state in order to function and trade. Hence there is nothing efficient about neo-liberal efficiency and nothing free about its freedom.

To the extent that “Cameronism” reflects Blond’s thinking on these questions and can actually put them into practice, that could keep the coalition from cracking up. It would also be well worth contemplating how American conservatives could borrow and learn from it. Then again, to the extent that Cameronism reflects Blond’s thinking, American conservatives are most likely going to turn against it and oppose anything that remotely resembles it.