Managerialism...

The Sixties Regime in Power: The Dangerous Shortcomings of the Managerial Class by James Kalb

P. Blond, David Cameron has lost his chance to redefine the Tories
He has abandoned the vision of one-nation conservatism that so inspired me, and retoxified his party



A comment on FB:

Phillip Blond has learned what many of us knew instinctively at the outset - the UK Conservative Party is not and cannot become a vehicle for a pluralised economy and a stronger civil society. It is a vehicle for a concentration of power and a devaluation of voluntary association. A new political vehicle is needed for this project.

This doesn't mean Phillip's journey has been wasted. His writings have been immensely valuable around the world in reinvigorating progressive conservative thinking and in reminding people like myself that our agenda belongs in the centre of the political arena and not at the fringe.

In particular, Phillip's revival of the concept of human association as the core value and practice of conservatism, to be protected from both statism and neo-liberalism, is of enormous importance.

I suspect the full potential of this agenda will develop more fully in the UK now that Phillip has broken with the CP. The term "Red Tory" will also fade, and that too is a good thing - it limited the appeal of the civil society agenda to one side of a broken polity instead of building a constituency from all sides.

The lessons here are global: neither the Australian Liberal Party, nor the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party, nor the US Republicans, nor the German Christian Democrats, nor the Spanish New Democrats, nor the New Zealand National Party, can be vehicles for this new politics. They are immersed in the culture and practice of state managerialism and neo-liberalism. The critical insight, as applicable to the UK Conservative Party and to the rest, is that it is the PRACTICE of managerialism, not the stated philosophy or policies, that is determinative. A managerial practice will give you a managerial politics no matter what appears in the party platform.

Centre for Civil Society

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