2013: The Year of Vince

By Joe Otten | Sat 23rd March 2013 - 4:27 pm

Following Vince Cable’s gentle call for more capital spending – now reflected in the recent budget – Politics Home talks to the Business Secretary. In suitably glowing terms…

In many ways, his allies think 2013 is The Year of Vince. His once lonely call (in the Coalition at least) for more capital spending and reliefs has been heeded. His ‘responsible capitalism’ agenda will bear fruit this year with boardroom and shareholder changes. He’s outmanoeuvred the Treasury by getting a £1bn business bank – in return for a Tory policy on employee share rights that has been gutted by the Lords and snubbed by business. A Green Investment Bank has been secured, as well as a proper split between ‘casino’ and ‘retail’ banks. Cable has even delivered 50% departmental efficiency savings while gearing up the Royal Mail for a sell-off.

But most of all, he says he’s won a fight to focus on the long term.

At the Waugh Room, under the headline Deng Xiao-Vince, Paul Waugh is struck by the triumph of experience over youth that Vince represents.

There’s clearly some talking up of Vince as a possible future leader here, but how many Liberal Democrat members would trust the press to not, on a whim, make age an issue again? Or perhaps the issue of the health of bee populations – vital though it is – might one day be subject to how “everyone wants to know” whether it is the sort of thing that only eccentrics are interested in.

I read in the interview a degree of straight talking and quiet effectiveness, that we may all want our politicians to exhibit, but which rarely survives the political bear pit. He would be wasted as leader.

* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.

6 Comments

Geoffrey Payne 23rd Mar '13 - 4:39pm

I have to laugh at that last sentence; “I read in the interview a degree of straight talking and quiet effectiveness, that we may all want our politicians to exhibit, but which rarely survives the political bear pit. He would be wasted as leader.”
No we can’t have a straight talking leader, far better to have one who doesn’t say what he means. That is a real recipe for success!
Bill le Breton 23rd Mar '13 - 6:43pm

Cable’s great triumph in this budget has been to get regime change at the Bank of England. The first change in many years. It looks as if we now will have a Central Bank pursuing a dual target of both growth and inflation. It has taken Cable and his office many months getting the issue considered and a change introduced.

The actual change may not have gone as far as he may have wished, but it is very possible that the new Governor of the Bank of England will have been given enough scope to increase nominal income (or nominal GDP). If by this time next year Mr Carney has not been able to achieve that, expect further change. If he has, then growth will be returning, tax revenues rising, benefits falling and deficit:GDP ratio improving.

Do have a look at the seminar – it is all you need to know to get a grip on this radical approach to ending the Great Recession.

For those interested in the ideas behind these moves, Ryan Avant of the Economist plus two other Market Monetarists had a seminar at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday and the film is here http://www.aei.org/events/2013/03/22/mend-it-dont-end-it-revamping-the-fed-for-the-21st-century/

In many ways the tragedy is not that he hasn’t been our leader, it is that he hasn’t been this country’s Chancellor in its darkest time in generations.
Helen Tedcastle 23rd Mar '13 - 9:01pm

Vince’s age and accumulated wisdom is an asset not a liability – there is a need in my view for more wise and experienced heads to run this economy than the boys in short trousers we have at present.

I say this as someone who is the same age as Cameron but who is frustrated by the serial blunders and general lack of real-world experience of this current generation of silver-spooned ex-interns.
Michael Parsons 24th Mar '13 - 12:50pm

OK but infrastructure and such like spending (advocated at least since 1935) is only useful to us if directed at imediate national economic development for Britain. Wind power, for example, was developed by Brown only to find the equipment being imported from overseas, I believe. UK railway development will presumably do well in aiding the French to overcome their unemployment? And so on. – and don’t imagine the EU will saomehow create a more equable stance, I think. Indeed, EU is a pretty brutal show if we look south.
Nigel Jones 24th Mar '13 - 4:51pm

I wonder whether the bear pit of politics that tries to destroy a straight talking, quietly effective leader, is more in the realm of certain media, rather than in the public mind. It is often said by MPs that the weekly Prime Ministers Question time does not represent what actually goes on in Parliament, yet that sort of thing is what most catches people’s attention. Vince is always careful in what he says (except when he thought he was speaking in private), though even he does not always explain clearly why our leadership have too often accepted Tory policies without saying they are either against our party’s views or a pragmatic compromise.
The media prefer drama, but would it be possible for leaders in Coalition to dramatise the clash between Lib-Dem principles and those of the Tories, while in practice having to carefully settle for decisions which are often compromises ?
Joe Otten 24th Mar '13 - 5:43pm

@Geoffrey I am referring to, for example, Vince’s willingness to discuss the pros and cons of a rival point of view. That’s very rare – and he is often interpreted as being off-message as a result. Normal practise is to mention only the pros of your position and only the cons of the other, changing the subject if necessary. And it means that debate never gets very far.