Pointing to the latest episode of the Tories kowtowing to China, Phil notes the absurdity that:

A right wing Conservative government is letting a strategic industry collapse to curry favour with the world's leading communist power.

This is ironic only in Alanis Morissette's sense of the word - which is to say, not ironic at all. In truth, we shouldn't be surprised at all by Tories finding common cause with Communists.

This might seem odd to those who remember Conservatives' attacking Communism for its appalling human right record. But those attacks were always hypocritical. Many right-wing cold warriors variously supported Macathyism; Pinochet's murder of dissidents; the slavery that was the draft and National Service; the brutal repression of homosexuals; and the denial of the most basic rights of self-ownership to women - marital rape was not criminalized in England until 1991. And they were deplorably silent about apartheid's denial of basic human rights.

What Tories objected to in Communism was not its denial of freedom generally, but rather the denial of a particular form of freedom - the freedom of a few bosses to make money at the expense of others.

From this perspective, Conservatism and Communism have much in common. Both support inequalities of power which deny autonomy and self-determination to workers. As Corey Robin has written (pdf):

Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.

Osborne and Hunt's support for Chinese-style sweatshops, in which millions of drones slave away to enrich others, fits this pattern.

The main difference between Communists and Conservatives is not one of principle but of degree: Conservatives applaud centrally planned economies within companies, but Communists think it should be extended to the whole economy.

Even this difference is narrowing. Like Communists, the Tory government wants power to be centralized. For example, Roger Gough - a Tory member of Kent County Council - says of enforced academization:

Whitehall now clearly believes that it knows those schools' best interests than they do themselves. School autonomy only counts when it comes up with the 'right' answer. Nor are the wishes or choices of parents seen to count for anything, a paternalistic and technocratic approach reflected in the equally unjustified proposal to end the requirement for parent governors.

And Robin Hambleton says of "devo-Manc":

The Osborne proposals involve Whitehall taking three massive steps to centralise power.
First, who is going to decide which areas of the country are to have these new governance arrangements? Answer: ministers. Second, who will decide the criteria for devolving power to these lucky localities? Answer: ministers. Third, who will be crawling over the detailed proposals individual cities have for urban development and socio-economic innovation? Answer: ministers.

The big divide in politics and economics isn't so much left versus right as between those who believe in top-down control versus those who believe in decentralization and empowering all the people. On this divide, Tories and Communists are on the same side.