Time to give George Osborne some credit?

This speech given by George Osborne to Policy Exchange today is one of the clearest examples of the Conservatives detailed responses to the "do-nothing" tag that Brown and his sad band of acolytes have been trying to pin on them.

It's about time that some of the more sensible members of the Labour Party who slavishly follow the Mandelson/Campbell spin to stop and think: "actually, the Conservatives' ideas have the merit of being more likely to shorten the length and reduce the depth of the recession than the current hotch-potch of knee-jerk reactions we've had from Brown and Darling and which are failing to address the central problem of lack of credit in the economy".

Of course, what will happen is that Brown will delay and dither and then pinch the basic ideas and dress them up in other words. But, in the end he will fail yet again to understand the basic principles that underlie them. All he is interested in is his electoral prospects.