Politics & Power Quote by John Redwood

Redwood’s line is a neat bit of moral jujitsu: it flatters the listener’s decency while quietly redefining what “help” should look like. The opening move, “Most agree,” is less observation than pressure tactic. By declaring a cross-party consensus, he tries to pre-empt dissent as petty or ideological. If you disagree, you’re not just wrong; you’re outside the reasonable mainstream.

The substance is classic market-liberal realism dressed in humanitarian clothes. “Open its agricultural markets” sounds technical, almost bloodless, until he pivots to “poorer countries of the globe,” a phrase that widens the frame to the planetary and the ethical. He’s not arguing for generosity; he’s arguing for access. The subtext is that Western protectionism - tariffs, quotas, subsidies - is a central culprit in keeping developing economies stuck selling low-margin goods into rigged markets. If we’re serious about development, stop subsidizing our own farmers into dominance and then writing checks to soothe our conscience.

The sharpest turn is the contrast: “our markets more than our charity.” It’s an attack on aid as performative and paternalistic, and a defense of trade as dignity: let them earn rather than receive. Politically, it also launders self-interest. Opening markets can be sold as moral leadership while aligning with a smaller-state suspicion of foreign aid budgets. The quote works because it forces a choice: feel-good giving, or structural change that might actually cost domestic constituencies something.