British neo-cons

"Gently does it" by Simon Kuper (FT Magazine, 30 Apr, subscribers only) on Nicholas Boles: he narrowly failed to win the seat of Hove and Portslade, 'co-edited a book of Conservative essays called A Blue Tomorrow with Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey', '...in foreign policy he calls himself “a bit of a neo-con”, by which he means he shares the view of the US “Vulcans” that the government should act to spread democracy abroad'. He runs a think-tank:

Policy Exchange scoured the world, and decided that the main thing wrong with Britain compared with other countries was that it was run almost entirely from the capital city. Policy Exchange commissioned a keynote pamphlet by Simon Jenkins, called Big Bang Localism, published last November. In it, Jenkins argues that the second world war, Clement Attlee and then Margaret Thatcher had centralised Britain to the umpteenth degree, but that Blair then made it worse.
...
“The great cities were built by strong local leaders who said, ‘It’s an outrage that there are open sewers, it’s a public good that we’re going to provide.’ Or Robert Peel saying, ‘I’m fed up with aristos hiring their own personal thugs, I’m going to create a police force.’”

Personally, the only Tory who has impressed me recently is Michael Gove. For example, he has always backed Tony Blair's policy on Iraq. Another neo-con, then. And he was elected on 05.05.05.