Revealed: why the Red Tories aren't Cameroons

The Red Tory publicity machine is gearing up once again, with Phillip Blond's book of that title published by Faber & Faber on Monday.

Blond is the great thinking hope of the ProgCons. Yet Red Toryism is socially conservative but heavily market interventionist. Cameronism is often the opposite on both fronts: socially liberal but much more free market.

But only now do we have new and surely conclusive proof of the depth of that Red Tory-Cameroon rift: the book launch is at the Carlton Club, where the jacket and tie dress code will be strictly enforced.

I will be in conversation with the great man at Foyles (Charing Cross Road), London next Wednesday night (31st March). (Free tickets are available from events@foyles.co.uk). I am also due to be talking Red Toryism with him on Sky News around 10.30 on Sunday morning, so I had better read the book.

In the new Prospect, Blond picks a fight with Tim Montgomerie and the Tory right, describing Montgomerie's prescription of 'less Red Toryism and more red meat Toryism" as "disastrous". This clash of ideas within the right has long been prophesised: we shall see whether red Tory or blue blood is spilled.

For those struggling to make head nor tail of it, try Next Left's guide Everything you wanted to know about Red Toryism but were afraid to ask.