During the financial crisis and subsequent recession it was rare to go a weekend without Vince Cable making an appearance on our television screens to share his thoughts on the latest piece of economic news. Since entering government as the coalition’s business secretary, though, he has kept his wider economic analysis more-or-less to himself, concentrating instead on the important task of running his department.
However, yesterday Vince took part in a talk at the Guardian Open Weekend, in conversation with Observer columnist Will Hutton, where he shared his thoughts on the economic recovery, the future of the banking system and – perhaps most interestingly – on changing the focus of the Bank of England. Here are the highlights, courtesy of the Guardian:
Poor Ed Miliband — an attempt to make a serious speech on youth unemployment was overshadowed yesterday by his failure to be able to distinguish men from women when he took questions. As ITN labelled it in true tabloid fashion, Ed Miliband’s triple-fail: ‘Is that a man or a woman?’ Here’s the video:
Actually the real shame of Ed’s fluffed lines distracting from his speech is that it distracts from Labour’s latest fluffed policies. Not only is the party re-spending — for the umpteenth time — their bankers’ bonus tax, but their so-called ‘Real Jobs Guarantee’ is a pale imitation of Nick Clegg’s Youth Contract. As Jo Swinson noted:
If you missed out on today’s key NHS debate at the Lib Dems’ spring conference, this BBC video featuring clips from a handful of the speakers who oppose the Coalition’s NHS reforms gives you a flavour. You can also catch up with what happened via Mark Pack’s live-blog of the debate here, and my round-up of the immediate reactions to the vote against the party leadership here.
If you’re missing out on the thrills and spills of the Lib Dems’ spring conference in NewcastleGateshead, hopefully these videos will offer you some flavour of proceedings…
Nick Clegg took part in an afternoon Q&A at today’s Lib Dem conference, and vigorously defended the changes to the NHS being implemented by the Coalition as amended by the party. Conference representatives earlier voted, by a slim margin of 309 votes to 280, to debate tomorrow morning Shirley Williams’ motion, ‘Saving the NHS’, rather than the ‘Drop the Bill’ motion put forward by Winchester Lib Dems.
‘Nick Clegg goes after the ultra-rich’ is how the Telegraph today trails its interview with the Lib Dem leader, in which he signals his determination to write into law a ‘Tycoon Tax’ — a specific minimum rate of tax to ensure people are “paying their fair share” and not “massaging” the system.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg this week launched a passionate defence of the Coalition’s work experience initiatives, arguing that they help prepare jobless young people for employment. This follows the controversy about ‘workfare’, which some critics have labelled ‘slave labour’, an attitude Nick condemns here as displaying a “messed up set of priorities”:
By Stephen Tall
| Wed 29th February 2012 - 7:55 am
Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, was interviewed by the BBC’s Andrew Neil at the weekend on some of the key issues currently facing the party and the Coalition. These included the Lib Dem push for tax-cuts for the low-paid, maintaining the 50p tax-rate for those earning more than £150,000, and the NHS reform bill.
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 28th February 2012 - 6:50 pm
Here’s a clip of former Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Menzies Campbell declaring reform of the unelected upper house — that century-old piece of ‘unfinished business’ — is an innate part of what defines Liberal Democrats:
That is “the first rule of politics” in the sense of the “first rule of comedy, Spike” catchphrase in the late lamented David Croft’s Hi de Hi.
In this case, the rule I am thinking of is:
Always book a venue slightly too small for your expected audience. That way the room/hall will seem full and vibrant.
LibDems love to repeat the story of the agent who put out one chair for a meeting. Three people arrived. The agent brought in two extra chairs from the next room, then released a statement to the press about the meeting saying:
Extra chairs had to be brought in.
It says something about the cack-handedness of Mitt Romney’s US Republican nomination campaign that he can obviously learn a thing or two from the humblest agent.
The Democrat National Committee have put together this video of a rather disastrous Mitt Romney “rally” in Detroit, Michigan.
It’s worth watching this video all the way through for the priceless comment from an incredulous political pundit at the end.
Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George voted on Wednesday to publish the NHS “risk register”, a document containing a detailed analysis of what could go wrong with the proposed changes in the health service in England. Here he explains why, and that though the Health Bill is now “less bad” he is yet to be persuaded it should go through:
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 21st February 2012 - 3:05 pm
The News of the World is dead, long live the Sun on Sunday… starting from this Sunday. Here’s how two Lib Dems have responded to the announcement by News International…
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 9th February 2012 - 12:45 pm
More than 60 Lib Dem peers have rebelled against the Coalition government’s plans during this Parliament. Here Baroness (Susan) Kramer talks about how she and her colleagues attempt always to be constructive in their dissent.
* Warning: the following video contains scenes with Quentin Letts, which some viewers may find distressing.
Here’s Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander interviewed on Sunday lunchtime, defending the Coalition’s decision not to demand RBS chief executive Stephen Hester return his controversial bonus — a few hours before Mr Hester voluntarily forfeited it to defuse the row:
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 26th January 2012 - 10:10 pm
Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander was grilled by BBC Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman on Wednesday night about the UK’s negative growth figures — here’s what Danny had to say about the Coalition’s economic strategy:
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 24th January 2012 - 10:45 am
As we reported here on LibDemVoice yesterday, Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable yesterday announced to the House of Commons a number of measures to curb excessive boardroom pay:
This video clip shows the complete debate episode which led to Gallagher’s political demise. The discussion centres on a visit to a businessman’s house on behalf of Fianna Fail. Fellow Presidential candidate Martin McGuinness accuses Sean Gallagher of accepting a cheque from the man.
After denials from Gallagher, there is a commercial break. Then, presenter Pat Kenny announces that a tweet has come from Sinn Fein saying that they will produce the man to say that Gallagher accepted the cheque from him.
Under pressure, Gallagher then says, at 7’38” in this video, that he may have taken an envelope from the businessman. The word “envelope” has very strong connotations of corruption in Irish politics. At the very mention of the word by Gallagher, there are loud snorts of derision from the studio audience.
This may be the only time in history that a promising Presidential campaign was ended by just one word – “envelope”.
“It surely can’t be fair, can’t be right, that you can be earning more on benefits than someone going out and earning £35,000, which is the equivalent if you were to go out and work.”
Nick Clegg yesterday called on more British companies to offer shares to their employees, arguing it will improve productivity and unlock growth: “We don’t believe our problem is too much capitalism – we think it’s that too few people have capital.”
Conservative cabinet minister Michael Gove’s suggestion that a new royal yacht should be “a gift from the nation to her majesty” on the occasion of her diamond jubilee earned diplomatically short shrift from Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg today:
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 12th December 2011 - 7:16 pm
Here’s Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg explaining his position on Europe, his disagreement with David Cameron on the outcome of the summit, and why he missed today’s Commons debate:
Last week, the Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Mark Littlewood, spent an hour talking to David Laws at the IEA’s Westminster headquarters. Before a packed room, Mark and David touched on a whole range of issues – taxation, Europe, the formation of the coalition, just exactly how liberal the Liberal Democrats are, and many more.
The hour-long exchange, which you can see below, is well worth a watch:
The former model and singer Sam Fox challenged foreign office minster Jeremy Browne on the Daily Politics about tiger farms in China which she wants to see closed. Mr Browne told her that he would raise the matter with the Chinese. Fewer than 3,500 tigers remain in the wild around the world.
Steve Webb MP has raised fears about pensions’ poor image and how low interest rates and quantitative easing have damaged annuities. The Pensions Minister, who said the government is going to use employers to promote pensions and auto-enrolment, described auto-enrolment as being like a Ming vase – “very precious, but very fragile”.
He added he wants to change perceptions and instil confidence in retirement planning to ensure that charges are not too high and that pensions offer value for money. He said: “We need to move from a system that’s fiendishly complicated, that still leaves millions of pensioners living in poverty, to one, ideally, where we have a single, simple, decent state pension on which people can build.” …
He also said quantitative easing has damaged pensions. When asked about concerns over annuity risk given low interest rates and quantitative easing, the Minister admitted to “an issue about volatility, not knowing what you are going to get and an issue about poor returns.”
You can see Steve’s interview with Saga’s Director-General Ros Altmann below:
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 19th November 2011 - 2:25 pm
Lib Dem Voice contributor Paul Walter noted here Nick Clegg’s strong response in this week’s Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions to the Labour party’s aim of protecting its cosy financial relationship with the trade unions — but for those who missed it here’s that exchange in full:
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 17th November 2011 - 7:20 am
For those who’ve not yet seen it, here for your enjoyment is Baroness Trumpington’s candidly digital response to her Tory colleague Lord King’s accidentally ungallant reference to “the survivors of World War II started to look pretty old”:
At the initiative of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, the European Day of Languages has been celebrated every year since 2001 on 26 September. Throughout Europe, 800 million Europeans represented in the Council of Europe’s 47 member states are encouraged to learn more languages, at any age, in and out of school. Being convinced that linguistic diversity is a tool for achieving greater intercultural understanding and a key element in the rich cultural heritage of our continent, the Council of Europe promotes plurilingualism in the whole of Europe.
Nick Clegg is rare in being a British polyglot politician, an internationalist of Russian and Dutch descent who is fluent in six languages. And here’s the video proof…
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 22nd September 2011 - 7:55 am
Were you at Birmingham and so missed out on how the Lib Dem conference was reported? Not at Birmingham and so missed out on seeing Lib Dem MPs and government ministers up close and personal? We hope these videos will help (re-)connect you…
David Allen A clear, credible, principled strategy from the Yorkists! Makes a welcome change.
Sadly, followed by twenty below-the-line posts, providing nearly twenty ve...
Simon McGrath so we get a permanant increase in costs for these subsidies based on ( alleged ) windfall profits. Its another big increase in spending -how is it to be paid ...
Peter Davies @Kira CollinsThat assumes we want to help people more with their energy bills than with all the other bills they may be struggling with. There is no reason why ...
Rob Heale Agree that we need to focus on strategy and have clearer messaging:-
1. We MUST prioritise membership recruitment in all we do, including PPB's, most leaflets...
Kira Collins Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...
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The Joy of Six 1530
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Should Labour reconsider the Brexit red lines?
Raising a flap about letterboxes
Restrained
Chase Park fair photos
David Allen 
Simon McGrath 
Peter Davies 
Rob Heale 
Kira Collins 