Playing John Redwood up front will bring rewards

I really hoped the Conservative Party would have stepped up to the mark on issues of economic principle during the financial crisis – but they have been disappointing. So I will go further than what others have said and argue that it is John Redwood who has the ability to ‘connect’ – he connects himself to the philosophy he espouses (he doesn’t offer a sewn up set of impersonal disjointed policies), he connects to average ‘pay my way’ voters on the ground and he connects his own framework coherently into a better (Conservative) vision for how the Government, BoE and even FSA should have acted during the financial crisis. He also has the benefit of experience as a former Cabinet minister. In the absence of a practical Conservative Party view, he was not only right on his anti-bailout sentiment but he was right to have given private markets absolute priority over any state recapitalisation measures. Not because his view is merely popular, but because he is most probably right, John Redwood should be up there working with Osborne deciding how the Conservatives are realistically going to act in the future of this crisis (both the financial one and the political one of their own making).