Category Archives: Parliament

Vince did it again, successfully raising a host of Government debacles, most seriously Iraq, at the last Prime Minister’s Questions of the year – and his final one as acting leader. What is grabbing Vince another round of plaudits, though, is his quickfire riposte to Gordon Brown not to speculate about leadership contests given the PM’s recent lacklustre record.

Vince’s triumph in the bearpit of the Commons is undisputed (for all that PMQs remains our Parliamentary democracy at its pantomime worst), and he’s certainly raised the bar for his successor, whether Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne. Whoever wins could be forgiven for feeling a tad daunted at the prospect of following Vince.

Anyway, here’s the full Hansard exchange:

No quips today – acting Lib Dem leader Vince Cable returned to the scene of his triumph last week to quiz the Prime Minister on Northern Rock, demanding once again to know what guarantees Labour has received that the taxpayers’ loan to the troubled bank will be repaid – and why he still refuses to countenance temporary nationalisation to protect the interests of the British people.

(Rather bizarrely, Sky News’s Boulton & Co blog asserts that Vince “got lost with lacklustre questions” – which I think says more about their preference for Commons’ theatrics than it does about Vince’s pointed, and to-the-point questions.)

Anyway, here’s the exchange in full:

What is there left to say? Another great PMQs’ performance from Vince has even got PoliticalBetting.com worrying that he’s setting the bar too high for whichever of Nick or Chris succeeds him as party leader. For the record, I think he (whoever he is) will do just fine.

(As some political commentators seem to be surprised by quite how well Vince is currently performing, I will take the liberty of posting this link to an article I wrote in autumn 2006: Why I like Vince.)

Below is the Hansard transcript of today’s PMQs joust between Vince and Gordon:

Acting Lib Dem leader Vince Cable today took Gordon Brown to task – and after this week’s Government shambles he had plenty of choice of subject matter.

Cunningly Vince rolled up both Northern Rock and the HRMC’s lost data into his first question; though trying to stir up the Blair/Brown row allowed Gordon easily to deflect Vince’s point. For his second question, Vince moved on to QinetiQ, raising a valid concern about another instance of Labour’s financial incompetence; but this wasn’t the issue uppermost in people’s mind today.

(And, yes, yet again Gordon referred in his reply to ‘the Liberal party’ rather than the Liberal Democrats. I guess he must think we’ll be insulted or wound up by it; personally, I just find it bemusing. Does he really think it will make him sound more Prime Ministerial if he can’t get right the name of this country’s third largest political party?)

Full PMQs transcript of the Vince-Gordon exchanges below (via Hansard):

Acting Lib Dem leader Vince Cable is proving a pretty effective performer at the weekly charade of Prime Minister’s Questions.

I’m not sure he exactly relishes the task – making good use of the two questions allotted to the leader of the third party, who must put his case without the prop of the despatch box on which Messrs Brown and Cameron are able to rely, is perhaps the most unenviable job in Parliament. But he does enter into the spirit of it with a less embarrassed demeanour than Ming Campbell, whose heart you could tell was not in the theatrical displays which passes for debate in the mother of parliaments.

And though he clearly respects the Prime Minister, he does not feel hampered by friendship (as maybe Ming did) in giving Gordon a kick in the ballots. Today he took Mr Brown to task for Labour’s luke-warm commitment to the environment (for the background to which, see Bridget Fox’s article on LDV yesterday):

As the party’s acting leader, it was Vince Cable’s turn to put the questions to the Prime Minister at this week’s pointless half-hour of theatrical nonsense. You can watch the exchange here.

Here’s the transcript: