Today’s Financial Times reports an interview with Vince Cable in which the Lib Dem business secretary declines to exclude the possibility he might one day become party leader:
Mr Cable stressed that the Lib Dem leadership was not on his radar screen, nor remotely up for grabs, insisting that Nick Clegg was “doing a good job and is standing up to the pressures”. But in an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Cable was careful not to close down the prospect of a leadership bid when a vacancy arose. “I don’t exclude it – who knows what might happen in the future,” he said. …
“The worship of youth has diminished – perhaps generally – in recent years,” he said: a comment that might be deemed by some as a criticism of the generation of forty-somethings at the top of the government. Mr Cable added that this reappraisal might be because “there is a certain respect for people who have had some insight into what’s going on”.
Vince also notes his popularity among Lib Dem members as recorded in our regular LibDemVoice surveys:
He enjoys what he jokingly describes as “North Korean levels of support” in the party – a reference to an 80 per cent approval rating in a recent survey.
And here’s what he has to say about working with the Tories and his view of David Cameron:
“They’ve always been my opponents and I have seen them in that light,” he says. Mr Cable attempted to forge a Lib-Lab deal with Gordon Brown after the inconclusive 2010 election and he happily describes himself as “a social democrat”. While he admires David Cameron’s leadership style, he says he is unsure whether the prime minister is a traditionalist or a modernising one nation Tory. “He speaks for the latter but I don’t know whether he is – deep down.”
As for suggestions that he’s anti-business — well, they get short shrift:
“I think where it may come from actually is people in the City and the banks because I don’t pull any punches where they’re concerned. There is an anti-business culture in the banking system. … When I made my statement on executive remuneration and responsible capitalism, I had some of those [macho-right] backbenchers jumping saying this is socialism or Marxism, they just completely don’t get it.”
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11 Comments
“But in an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Cable was careful not to close down the prospect of a leadership bid when a vacancy arose. “I don’t exclude it – who knows what might happen in the future,” he said. …”
How interesting. It’s all very well talking about the worship of youth diminishing, but considering Vince Cable is 69 he surely can’t thinking that far beyond 2015…
It would be easier to be enthusiastic about Dr Cable if he had read the Coalition Agreement and understood that it required ‘the government’, eg him and Nick Clegg , and not just the Conservatives, to respond to the Browne proposals, not to just implement them virtually wholesale, thus putting LD backbenchers in an impossible position on tuition fees.
It would have been better if Cable had simply pointed out that there is no vacancy & that he is too busy with government to speculate about possible futures. As it is he is being seen as undermining Clegg, not helpful to the party or the country.
I think this is helpful to the party – it is a warning to the Tories that if they continue to push their luck on Clegg then they might then have to deal with Cable instead.
The Tories have been utterly ruthless as Coalition partners no doubt because they think they can get away with it. Blocking House of Lords reform has to be the final straw. I think we should have to press much harder on wealth taxes, whether the mansion tax or LVT. On this issue we are more in tune with public opinion, if the Tories want to resist implementing this in the next budget, then lets not agree to their budget and have a crises in government where the public supports us at the Tories expense. If Clegg is not prepared to do that, then lets have Cable.
Paul, you are surely wise enough to know that whatever he said they would have turned it around to make a headline, you don’t need to take it further.
“Paul, you are surely wise enough to know that whatever he said they would have turned it around to make a headline, you don’t need to take it further.”
On the contrary, this is one of the oldest questions in the book. Everyone knows that anything less than a flat dismissal of the possibility is a statement. If Cable really said “I don’t exclude it”, then that was a strong statement.
I have long thought vince should be next leader of te party-he is that rare thing in a liberal democrat-a teflon politician-even his grevious errors-such as over the BSkyB issue-tunred into triumphs
David,
So, the fact that Nick Clegg had the guts to stand in front of millions of viewers and dominate the pre-election TV both verbally and in poise means nothing? Do you think Vince, for all his erudition, could have done that?
Also, as much as I am areal fan of Vince, he simply has not used BIS sufficiently to produce a proper economic growth plan. The Cabinet Office gets more credit than BIS for that in the way they launched their Construction Strategy. And remember, it was Nick, not Vince that put employee owned companies into the limelight, as well as endorsing co-ops, i.e. non-capitalist forms that are economically successful.
I suggest you back-off.
My impression is that Vince is completely out of his depth. Lost in detail and absent of vision.
This is from watching his performance at the Bank Lending and Business Growth Select Committee. Every answer he gives has the same format – it’s a complicated problem and there’s lots of details that make everything difficult and no I’m not monitoring the things you want monitored but it’s not necessary and anyway someone else in government or the civil service is probably doing that.
I’ve had students like that. You ask a searching question and they try to lead you off in another direction and it’s obvious they haven’t done the homework but they’ll never admit it, even to themselves, and they’ll fail the end-of-term exam and complain bitterly that it was all unfair.
The effect is that everything Vince deos or thinks seems as opaque and muddled as it can be!
@Richard Dean:
“everything Vince deos or thinks seems as opaque and muddled as it can be!”
He’s fit in perfectly at number 10, then. 🙂
I was hoping that the LibDems might aspire to breaking the mould, rather than doing like all the others before! 🙂