This seems an appropriate day to review Philip Blond's Red Tory. Blond runs the think tank ResPublica which has arrived recently with a splash on the policy scene. He's said to have influenced the Conservatives' 'Big Society' idea, but his book seems to me to have had an influence across the spectrum. The division his ideas speak to isn't the opposition between left and right so much as that between communitarian and libertarian.

However, he's greatly disliked by some on the left: in the London Review of Books recently, Jonathan Raban accused him of basing his ideas on thinkers who influenced Mussolini, in a bitter and even mean-spirited review (for example, writing “Blond writes a kind of polytechnic prose in which the various jargons of philosophy, sociology, economics and tehology are churned together as in a concrete mixer.” It's certainly not that bad!)

So this is definitely a book you need to read yourself if you want more than the reviewer's politics reheated. I think it amply repays the time for anyone interested in the policy challenges ahead. Whoever is prime minister of the UK after today's election will need to find ways of maintaining social welfare and tackling social divisions all agree on (see for example Danny Dorling's Injustice, reviewed here recently) while cutting government budget deficits by an unprecedented amount. The government won't be able to do all it has been accustomed to – what will fill the gap?

Blond's argument is in part a traditional conservative one, that expanding government provision of social support of many kinds has created a spirit of dependency and undermined traditional sources of support such as families, churches and local communities. He combines this with advocacy of greater economic egalitarianism including a more progressive tax burden and the creation of assets for low-income households. For example, one suggestion is that the payment of housing benefit for those without jobs could be structured so it pays for a growing equity stake in their home.

Public services will need to rediscover professional responsibility as past reforms have been woeful in their lack of impact on productivity and outcomes. The economy needs a more vigorous competition policy in order to make it work better for consumers – especially in banking. Like many on the left, he dislikes the emphasis on economic individualism that has characterised policy since the Thatcher/Reagan era:

“An anarchic market, that has abandoned trust and eschewed any ethos of the public good, requires a huge state bureaucracy to monitor it and enforce contracts and compliance. The costs of this audit state are enormous.”

Many people of various political persuasions would agree. Red Tory has a proliferation of policy ideas, some more sensible or appealing than others, some seeming to fit naturally into Conservative politics, others more naturally Labour or LibDem.

The underlying philosophy, with its emphasis on restoring the role of civil society in place of government, seems to me firmly in the tradition of communitarian thinkers. Blond doesn't cite Michael Sandel, but his Justice is one book I've read recently with echoes of this kind of argument. Personally, I'm more of a libertarian and fine Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice a more appealing guide to political philosophy. However, the question of what will replace government in the way we organize the economy and social support is an important one. In a way it's surprising there haven't been more books on this theme. So Red Tory is a good place to start.