To understand his dim view of the market, we have to understand what he means by "monopoly". He does not mean that "an individual company has undue market influence" but that "a certain way of doing business constitutes a cartel. For example, the great housing crash is primarily the result of the absorption of all local, regional and national systems of credit into one form of global credit. The world's financial system lacked the firewalls needed to separate local from national and international capital. Unduly reliant on one source of credit supply, the residential asset market collapsed when this supply was compromised." 

Blond is confused. Recent developments in banking have massively increased the available sources of credit. British borrowers can choose between dozens of mortgage suppliers and, by creating tradeable securities out of their mortgages, these suppliers can fund their lending from an almost unlimited number of sources. 

The "one source of credit" to which Blond refers is the global credit market. But the market is not the supplier. It is simply the means of connecting suppliers with consumers. You might as well say that, since there is a global market for coffee beans, there is only one source of them and we thus suffer under a coffee monopoly.

Blond may not know what a monopoly is, but he knows that it is a bad thing. So, having confused monopolies with markets whose participants are geographically dispersed, he seeks to erect those missing "firewalls" — or trade barriers, as they are more commonly known. 

He believes the state should protect local grocers from competition with non-local firms by denying Tesco and its ilk permission to trade. The same goes for capital, which will be have to be raised locally (after it has been redistributed, presumably). Consumers must be obliged to use their local supplier. To prevent monopoly, we must impose it. 

This economic Balkanisation, not promoted by most protectionists at the national level, but between — let us say — Exeter and Bristol, is the central policy proposal of Red Toryism. It is the means by which Britain will supposedly be transformed from a "market state" to a "civic state". 

In fact, it is a means by which Britain would be transformed from a rich country to a poor one, as anyone who understands the connection between the scope of trade, the division of labour and wealth creation could tell Blond. Alas, it seems that Blond is doing all the talking and others, including senior Conservatives, are doing the listening. And that is a shame.