The collected thoughts of John Redwood:
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"I've never claimed to be an ideologue. I think people put that label on me because I was an extremely keen advocate of privatisation."
Guardian, November 1993
On single parents:
"If someone is old enough to father a child, he should be old enough to bring it up."
Speech to Conservative Political Centre, July 1993
On Europe:
"Conservatives do not believe in a high-spend, high-tax Europe. We do not want a Europe fit for bureaucrats to spend other people's money in."
Speech to Oxford University Conservative Association, November 1994
On the welfare state:
"I believe that the taxpayer and the state have an important role to play for those in need, and for those whom the marketplace has left on one side through no fault of their own."
Guardian, November 1993
On the BBC:
"The BBC, pandering to the plight of those on low incomes, produces its own gap between the Islington Blair-band that watch and listen to it and the low-income Glaswegians that don't."
Speech to Wokingham Conservative Association, February 1995
On the Labour leadership:
"Tony Blair and John Prescott are the Eddie and Patsie of Absolutely New Socialism. Both are slaves to the ad and sound bite scene. The one unsure about his lifestyle and beliefs, the other a good old-fashioned socialist who would dearly love to say so."
Chesham and Amersham Conservative Association, May 1995
On education:
"Only the Conservative Party has the courage to challenge the orthodoxy that children know best, that free form is always better than formal instruction, that a child should pace himself."
Conservative Political Centre Jubilee Lecture, February 1995
On the NHS reforms:
"There is on the ground a restlessness among medical staff about the number of men in grey suits, about some of the directions coming from faraway offices and about the balance of expenditure between administration and health care."
Speech to Welsh Conservatives, November 1993
On Britishness:
"We have been a tolerant society for centuries, compared to many others. A love of lager or the ubiquity of Sky TV does not undermine but adds to the inheritance, for we are evolutionaries not revolutionaries."
Conservative Political Centre Jubilee Lecture, February 1995
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