Cable: “Lord Oakeshott’s actions are totally inexcusable”

Vince Cable - Some rights reserved by Liberal DemocratsBusiness secretary Vince Cable has released the following statement in the last few moments:

Lord Oakeshott’s actions are totally inexcusable and unacceptable. I have made it very clear repeatedly that he does not speak or act for me.

Commissioning and publishing polls without the consent of the Member of Parliament, as in the case of Sheffield Hallam, is utterly reprehensible.

There are undoubtedly raw feelings in the wake of poor local and European election results. We need to respond in a measured way. Public speculation about the leadership is an unwelcome distraction and as I made absolutely clear yesterday there is no leadership issue as far as I’m concerned.

Cable is currently in China on government business.

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51 Comments

  • Radical Liberal 27th May '14 - 6:00pm

    He had his chance and blew it. He could have been Major in 1990 but choose to be Portillo in 1995. Forget him, he pushed through fees anyway and is going to lose his own seat. Let’s focus on the 75 parties we need.

  • Eddie Sammon 27th May '14 - 6:01pm

    There should be absolutely no more begging from the pro-Clegg crowd. Now is the time to stamp authority on the party.

  • Explains why the poll asked about changing to Cable (and a comparison withAlexander to flatter him) but not Farron.

  • What am I missing, Mr Cable? What is so bad about polls?

  • Radical Liberal you are ignoring the realities of making a coalition work and the other options for change to improve our prospects for 2015. This media frenzy is doing us no good at all. Please stop digging, the hole is already deep enough. We have paid a high enough price already without people like you tearing the party apart.

  • Leekliberal 27th May '14 - 6:23pm

    I used to rate Lord Oakeshott – No longer!

  • Maggie Smith 27th May '14 - 6:23pm

    This thing is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. In fighting or avoiding the obvious, either way.

  • You speak of Major in 1990, but what effect did that have? It made sure the Tories didn’t realise that Thatcherism had run its course and become unelectable. A large part of their party ascribed his success to eleven years of Thatcher and not to a year and a half of Major. Their party still has those who believe that to win, they have to be more like Thatcher than even she was.

    Perhaps, had she led the Tories to a defeat in 1992, things would have worked out better for the country and for that party’s maturity and sense of reality.

    You want to see market liberals influence on this party reduced? An election defeat they can’t blame on other factors will do that.

    Creating a grassroots movement that uses our uniquely democratic party process to force a change? That would at least have the advantage of highlighting how different we are in terms of how we empower our membership.

    But a backroom backstabbing by a fellow coalition minister? Bad plan, tactically lacking and immoral too.

    I’m quite pleased Vince Cable seems to agree. Might even win him my vote in the next leadership selection, be it tomorrow or the day after the next election.

  • There may be a doctine/convention of only holding an opinion poll with the permission of the sitting MP. But if there is, I’ve never heard of it!

    If so, it would be news to every major polling organisation, and almost everyone who ever commissions polls…

  • Mike Biden “and the other options for change to improve our prospects for 2015.”

    Please could you elaborate on this?

  • Jack McKenna 27th May '14 - 6:35pm

    Clegg lives to fight another day, a victory for common sense in my opinion.

  • @ Phyllis: Yes, there’s an established three-step procedure which Lib Dem leadership has been following to improve the Party’s showing every year since 2010:
    1) Do nothing.
    2) Do nothing.
    3) Do nothing, and condemn anyone who tries to do something.
    This has predictably successful results.

  • David Evershed 27th May '14 - 6:55pm

    So Oakeshott planned to have polls about alternative ;eaders carried out in April and leaked them anonymously to the Guardian immediately after the EU elections as part of his campaign against the Lib Dem leadership.

    Oakeshott is trying to get Clegg replaced by his close friend the Lib dem Cabinet member who is the Secretary of State responsible for trebling tuition fees and selling off Royal Mail to private investors well below its value.

    Remember Heseltine. Cable will never replace Clegg. End of Oakeshott campaign.

  • Phyllis I have just written a four page paper for submission to party HQ which contains many specific proposals. It may be ignored, I hope not but it will have to remain confidential. This is not a secure forum. The problem now is that the leadership issue is all consuming and preventing any other topic of discussion.

  • A Self-Criticism
    I am convinced now. Having read several Lib Dem blogs on the subject, I now see that it would be the most gutless, weak-kneed, cowardly thing to do to hold Nick Clegg responsible for any of the losses and failures that have occurred during his watch. The fault is not, cannot have been, and never will be Nick Clegg’s. Instead, all the blame must be fixed on the membership for being insufficiently supportive of him. If our belief had only been stronger, if we had only clapped louder, we would not have caused our Leader so much pain and suffering. For this we must atone, in sackcloth and ashes. In our pride and arrogance we have called for a change of leadership. How just and fitting it would be for the leadership, in its might and majesty, to dissolve the membership and elect another!

  • Bill le Breton 27th May '14 - 7:38pm

    Good luck Mike with your paper.

    A couple of thoughts on this polling. Regardless of the morality of the decision to collect it, it has been done by a reputable company which will have known it’s potential to be widely discussed at sometime, so the company will have been careful with the process – it will have known that it’s details will have had to be published.

    So its results should be assessed carefully. Subsequent Euro results seem to provide some kind of substantiated.

    In Hallam the decision of the Tories not to contest all the wards plus the local:euro ratios all suggest it might have been an accurate picture of voter intention.

    On top of this Hallam must be receiving massive injections of campaign resources.

    It therefore shows just how dire the situation is.

  • The truncation of the story on the homepage is a little unfortunate

  • We have a by election coming up in Newark on Thursday June 5th in case you hadn’t heard. Rather than posting article after article defending Nick Clegg’s failed leadership how about giving us the details as to how to help in the campaign, deliver leaflets, canvass and where the Party HQ is etc or don’t you want to even rally the troops to help give it the best shot in Newark in support of our Candidate there. But no every thread is pro Clegg diatribe. Absolutely disgraceful of this site.

  • Your most sensible comment yet david. If you tell me when you are going I will meet you there – buy you a pint – put our differences to one side and do what we should all be doing – getting our message across to the voters. How about it? Later this week?

  • paul barker 27th May '14 - 8:21pm

    @Perhaps If Oakshotte & his employees hadnt put so much money & effort into destroying Clegg we could indeed be talking about Newark. It wasnt the LDV team who started all this nonsense.

  • Sorry david – why are you declining? – you want to know how to get to Newark – you chastise LD Voice for not advocating getting people there – I offer to meet you there …..AND buy you a pint….. and you decline. Why? The offer is still there

  • Surely we need some sort of end to this. If anyone is going to challenge Nick for the leadership they should come out and say so, letting the party have a leadership election and move one. If no-one wants the leadership (and lets be honest who can blame them) they should put up and shut up.

    One thing I am interested in is the notion that 75 constituency party’s could trigger an election. Does anybody think this is an actual possibility? I do hope not. The party has to unite or die.

  • Bill le Breton 27th May '14 - 9:03pm

    Jack, if your strategy is dependent upon abandoning 5/6th of the constituencies, you should not be surprised if those constituencies see no point in backing the architect of that strategy.

  • Well said Jack

  • jedibeeftrix 27th May '14 - 9:23pm

    is it just me getting confused by all the Davids conversing with all the Davids?

  • Perhaps we should organise a leadership debate in Newark on Saturday evening? We should get a good turnout.

  • Youre not the only one – As David – conversing with david – I find myself conversing with myself when his post disappears – maybe I should change my username
    Now there is an idea – why doesnt Nick Clegg stay on as leader but change his name? Wouldnt that satisfy everyone? No one could say Clegg is toxic
    I know I will regret this but what name should he adopt?

  • Jedi there are only two Davids. One with a capital D and one with small d. It’s actually not that hard once you get used to it.

  • Nico Klegge.

    I used to be a David, or perhaps a david (I forget) but I got confused talking to myself, so I appended the number. Now I feel like some new model of recreation equipment.

  • jedibeeftrix 27th May '14 - 9:46pm

    isn’t there also a david1 too?

  • Clear Thinker 27th May '14 - 9:49pm

    David, david, and David-1.
    A simple solution might be to provide last names, unless you all one big family of course. Last names also have that advantage that it avoids annoying the people who disapprove of anonymity, such as myself.

  • Jedi. David (capital D) speaks sense. david (small d) believes in a conspiracy of Orange Bookers who are conspiring to oust him from the party.

    Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

  • Using a last name could be somewhat confusing if your surname happened to be, say, Cameron.

  • David Hollingsworth 27th May '14 - 9:50pm

    What’s wrong with publishing these polls. They show Clegg should go and the sooner the better

  • Richard Dean 27th May '14 - 9:52pm

    Is this picture of Vince, grinning from ear to ear, really the one you intended to put with this headline?

  • Now even I am getting paranoid – I suggested I change my user name – and then suggested Nick Clegg changes his name – to get rid of the toxicity – and asked for suggestions – it went up and then came down – but as Nick said today – what goes up come down – so I shall await its 2nd coming – come on guys – it was meant as a light touch – just who do you think you are deleting posts that can hardly be said to be unkind/ provocative in any way.

  • David …. I’ve been rumbled …. my secret Orange Booker Army have been blocking transmissions from the Orange Booker HQ.

  • I strongly suspect there’s a systemic glitch rather than a deliberate attempt to censor individual posts. While I have not always agreed with the way LDV operates (mostly for very technical reasons) I have never known the comment moderation to be anything other than fair in intention — for the most part, scrupulously fair. From time to time there have been glitches; these are usually cleared up, but sometimes you have to call attention to them.

  • I used to be paranoid but now I know the bastards are out to get me

  • That was a joke by the way

  • Jedi yes there is a David 1 but he is not a David. He is a David1. Thankfully we do not have a david1 yet. But if we did he would not be a David.

    Are you getting into the swing if things now? 😉

  • Sorry Erratum! There us no David1. There IS a David-1 though. But still no david-1.

  • Careful David, you’re expected to check in your sense of humour at the door.

  • The 2nd coming has come – my initial comment is back – prepared to admit it must have been an internal gremlin / glitch
    You have restored my faith in Liberal democracy – I feel all kind of renewed – now lets get on those pavements in newark and really take the **** out of ourselves

  • @Jack
    “The party has to unite or die.”

    or
    “unite and die”
    because unless something changes we will bump along the bottom of the opinion poll ratings for the next ten months, just as we have for the last two years, with a leader who is toxic and less popular than Michael Foot.

    It was a recipe for disaster last Thursday, why will it suddenly become a recipe for success in the next 340 days ?

    Clegg has said that he is not going to change a thing. He is on course, he says, to win those 35 seats.

    If you are a Liberal Democrat living outside those 35 seats well tough, because he is not going to change a thing.

    35 you will remember is twice the number of MPs achieved under Charles Kennedy’s leadership ? Isn’t it?

    It must be because that is what Clegg promised us in the leadership election 7 years ago. And he always keeps his promises, doesn’t he?

  • Michael Foot stood as a solid representative of a particular kind of socialist ideology. Most voters disagreed with it, of course, but they had a good general notion of where he stood.
    After seven years, I have little in the way of an idea of what Nick Clegg represents, other than the prosperity and good fortune of Nick Clegg. It is this essential squishiness, this protean adaptability, which perhaps repulses voters more than anything else. I suppose Clegg has some fundamental principles; most people do. But he is perhaps excessively adept at concealing them.

  • As I have said several times, wouldn’t it be better to have Lib Dem nominated peers as sympathisers outside the party – still voting Lib Dem in the Lords most of the time as now, in accordance with their views, but without the ability for life to make public statements treated by the media as coming from a Lib Dem parliamentarian? Here is yet another example of the present setup being a liability.

  • David Evershed… “Oakeshott is trying to get Clegg replaced by his close friend “. I’d imagine with words like “inexcusable”, ” unacceptable” and “utterly reprehensible” being used – he’s now an ex-close friend. That’s the knd of language you’d use to condemn criminality. Not commissioning a poll, which anyone is entitled to do. To hammer some overzealous support with that language is quite distasteful. However unwelcome it was. That’s lack of loyalty to a supporter. I’d imagine former supporter.

  • jedibeeftrix 28th May '14 - 10:45pm

    @ CT, Tabman, and Phyllis.

    😀

    Thank you, i am amused.

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