Tag Archives: vince cable

Caron Lindsay

Cable on North Korea: Unilateral military action must be ruled out

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd September 2017 - 12:36 pm

Vince Cable has called for a parliamentary debate on the situation with North Korea as the country conducts its sixth nuclear missile test.

He said:

This alleged advancement North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme only strengthens the need to for an urgent diplomatic response to the crisis.

There is no military solution that does not risk the lives of millions, and no doubt that Trump’s war of words with Kim Jong-un has only served to heighten tensions.

Liberal Democrats are clear that the way forward requires engaging with China and other countries in the region to deescalate tensions. The government must urgently schedule time in Parliament to discuss this issue, and any unilateral military response must be ruled out.

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The Voice

Vince Cable provides road map for “exit from Brexit”

By The Voice | Sun 3rd September 2017 - 10:25 am

Vince Cable has set out how the process of Brexit could be stopped, saying that there was a “strong possibility” of a further referendum on the facts. The FT has the story from an event they ran this weekend:

In a debate at the FT Weekend Festival held at Kenwood House in North London on Saturday, Mr Cable said: “I think there is more than a possibility that Brexit may never happen.” He added: “The balance of probability is still that it does, but there is a strong possibility of it being stopped because tensions within and between major parties are so large, that one or other may want to let the public decide on the facts whether this is something they want to go ahead with.”

He was speaking after Theresa May’s visit to Japan in pursuit of a trade deal:

The Lib Dem leader said that prime minister Theresa May was struggling to prove Britain could strike good trade deals with non-EU economic powers. “We’ve just seen in the last few weeks how absurd this is,” he said. “The PM has gone off to Japan to negotiate some special trade deal and they have said they would much rather deal with the EU.” Mr Cable said that the government had asked India for a special deal on whisky and financial services, and that India had asked for more visas. “To which said, ‘sorry we can’t, we are trying to keep people out,’ and the Indians said, ‘get on your bike’,” Mr Cable said.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable hits Snapchat

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd September 2017 - 8:51 am

Vince Cable is certainly getting out there on social media at the moment.

He’s tweeting several times a day. He’s on Facebook  and, like everyone else these days, on Instagram

It was his latest post on Instagram that surprised me – announcing that he’s going to be on Snapchat, a medium most commonly used by the young people I know, from 15th September.

The post announces:

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The Voice

Vince Cable’s message for Eid-al-Adha

By The Voice | Thu 31st August 2017 - 5:50 pm

Vince Cable has published his message of solidarity with Britain’s Muslim community as they prepare to mark Eid-al-Adha.

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The Voice

Nick Harvey appointed as Lib Dems’ interim Chief Executive

By The Voice | Wed 30th August 2017 - 8:58 pm

Former North Devon Lib Dem MP Nick Harvey has been appointed as the Liberal Democrats’ interim Chief Executive following the departure of Tim Gordon earlier this month.

Nick has wide-ranging experience in PR, human resources, management and delivering change.

He comes from a City background, having been an account director at Dewe Rogerson, and worked at Profile PR and Westminster Consortium. He will take up his new role next week on the back of recent experience at Global Partners, where he was an adviser on Egypt and Jordan. He has also been seeking to widen access to the law as chair of Lawthority, while also chairing the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (a role he will step back from while serving as interim chief executive).

He was a campaigning and dedicated constituency MP for North Devon for 22 years. During this time (1992-2015) he served on the House of Commons Commission where he drove through reforms to modernise how parliament works. He was chair of campaigns for the Liberal Democrats in the late 1990s, including for the breakthrough 1997 election.

Nick said on his appointment:

I am greatly looking forward to supporting Vince Cable as our new Leader, and hope that working closely together we can further revive Lib Dem fortunes. The party has shown great resilience. Now we have a real opportunity to begin the process of moving forwards again.

British politics has never been in greater need of the Liberal Democrats. There is a major gap which only we can fill, not least on Brexit. This could have a dramatic impact on people’s jobs, the health and care system they depend on, and the schools and colleges which enable everyone to succeed in life.

We must boldly promote our liberal values, at home but also with partners abroad – not fighting them, but working to find international solutions to global security and environmental challenges.

The party has many talented, experienced and innovative people, as well as legions of new members. Together we can get things going again.

Vince Cable said:

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The Voice

Vince on Government’s “absurd” Japan trade plans

By The Voice | Wed 30th August 2017 - 8:55 am

Vince Cable has said that Theresa May’s visit to Japan has descended into farce before it has even begun. This was after the government briefed that a post-Brexit Britain would seek a trade deal with Japan based on the existing EU-Japan deal.

He put a reality check on the government’s spin:

Theresa May’s trip to Japan to gain a trade deal was already of questionable value because there can be no fresh agreements with other countries until we leave the EU.

But this staggering statement by the government just adds a whole new level of absurdity to their negotiating strategy. It is now saying that the best trade deal we can possibly hope for with Japan post-Brexit is the trade deal we already have as a member of the EU.

The likes of Liam Fox were promising a new dawn of improved trade deals but this clearly shows that even the government now recognises that the best possible deal we can get with one of the world’s largest economies is the deal negotiated by the EU.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince talks about his new novel and other things at the Edinburgh Book Festival

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 20th August 2017 - 11:11 am

I failed miserably when it came to getting Book Festival tickets this year. Starting a new job on the day the tickets came out meant that there were none left by the time I was able to look them up.

Sadly that meant that I missed Vince Cable’s session on his new book, Open Arms, which will be published on 7th September, so you’ll have to rely on the accounts of others.

Susan Mansfield in the Scotsman says he was a congenial Book Festival guest:

“I’m proud of the book, and I wish I’d done it earlier,” Cable said. His protagonist is an “independent-minded” female Conservative MP who becomes a Cabinet minister. “When I was a Cabinet minister, the two things that kept me sane were my weekly dancing lesson and having a pile of novels by the bed.”

 He made for a congenial Book Festival guest, free from the bluster and bombast of many in his line of work. Whether talking about his book, or about wider political issues, he was thoughtful and considered. Predictably enough, the conversation quickly left the novel behind.
On Brexit, Cable offered hope to remainers, saying there is a “significant possibility” that it might not happen. With Corbyn’s Labour Party “on the same page” as the Conservatives with regard to a hard Brexit, he hoped that rebels from both main parties could join forces with the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, and “the thing could unravel”.

In the Independent, he is quoted as saying that the book is “less discreet” than it might have been had he thought he would resume his career:

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Vince Cable’s Edinburgh Q & A

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 19th August 2017 - 11:02 am

Vince Cable came to Edinburgh yesterday on his tour of the country taking questions from members.

For 90 minutes, he answered questions on such varying subjects as tackling extremism, Brexit, freedom of movement, the triple lock, opportunities for young people and the fight against climate change.

He was particularly strong on tackling inter-generational unfairness and I was heartened to see him continue to keep social justice and reducing inequality as top priorities.

He talked about the need to curb some of the privileges pensioners get – such as wealthier people over state pension age who are still earning not paying National Insurance. He said it was important to maintain the triple lock, though, because we don’t want to go back to the days when so many pensioners lived in poverty.

I was really pleased to meet so many people who had recently joined the party – some who had specifically joined because Vince was leader.

Watch most of it in the next two video clips. Don’t be put off by the sound interference at the beginning of the first one. It sorts itself out.

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Caron Lindsay

No, Vince Cable will not be launching new anti-Brexit party with former Mail Political Editor

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 16th August 2017 - 5:33 pm

You do have to wonder if the @jameschappers Twitter account is a parody or has been taken over by the Brexiteers who are tweeting from some holiday bar for fun. It’s doing some seriously weird stuff at the moment, including suggesting that Vince Cable is going to be launching Chapman’s new anti Brexit Party on 9th September. Seriously.

No, he isn’t. It is that simple.

Jim Waterson of Buzzfeed has chapter and verse:

He quotes a Liberal Democrat spokesperson as saying:

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Caron Lindsay

Vince: Trump state visit would be “completely wrong” after Charlottesville comments

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 16th August 2017 - 2:44 pm

“Fine people on both sides” said Donald Trump of the horrific events in Charlottesville at the weekend. I suspect most of you reading this site will, like me, utterly reject the notion that you can go to a demo, stand on the same side as people carrying swastikas and dressing kids up in KKK costume and be a “fine person.”

Vince Cable has condemned Trump’s remarks and has renewed Liberal Democrat calls for the offer of a State visit to be withdrawn.

He said:

The events of the last few days have shocked and appalled the entire world.

Images of Nazis, marching in American streets, terrorist attacks on peaceful protestors. Every world leader should be able to condemn that.

Donald Trump’s response to these tragic events has been shocking.

He has shown that he is unable to detach himself from the extreme-right and racial supremacists.

The fact he remains highly dependent on White House advisors from the extreme-right shows he is firmly anchored in this detestable worldview.

It would be completely wrong to have this man visit the UK on a State Visit.

The government should be following the far more prudent example to relations with the US President set by Angela Merkel in Germany.

Tim Farron first called for the State visit offer to be withdrawn in the wake of Trump’s first attempt at a travel ban the week after he entered the White House.

It is pretty awful to have a Government that is so dependent on the hope of a trade deal that they won’t condemn the way he has reacted. We’ve spent the last 70 years at the heart of an organisation that has fought for human rights and democracy across the world. Now we are going to be entering a period of excessive pandering to all sorts of dodgy characters because we need their trade and will probably have to take it on whatever terms they demand. It will be a far cry from the days when we could roll up with 27 of our mates and tell them to get lost with their chlorinated chicken. 

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The Voice

Vince’s six questions for David Davis on the customs union

By The Voice | Wed 16th August 2017 - 10:29 am

Vince Cable has set out six questions the Government must answer after the “constructive ambiguity” in its document published yesterday told us not a huge amount. The questions seem designed to reveal whether the government’s position is actually based on any evidence about the impact of its options or whether the options are just a fig leaf to cover up the deep divisions in the Cabinet.

Vince said:

The government is offering two ways forward but won’t tell us which it prefers. That’s no doubt because cabinet ministers can’t even agree amongst themselves.

These plans are more concerned with papering over the cracks within the Conservative party than protecting our economy.

All those industries that depend on membership of the customs union, from the car industry to aerospace, still have no clear idea what is coming down the track.

All they know is that instead of jumping off a cliff in 18 months, the government now wants to do so in a few years’ time.

The government must come clean over the real costs of these plans for British businesses and consumers.

And on to the six questions:

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NewsHound

LibLink: Vince Cable: It’s time to tackle the UK’s dangerous addiction to debt

By NewsHound | Sun 13th August 2017 - 12:00 pm

One of Vince Cable’s claim to fame is that he accurately predicted the 2007 financial crash. Ten years on, he recently wrote an article for City AM in which he said that our economy was again at risk because of high debt levels.

Debt, in itself, isn’t bad. He talks about his own experience:

Indeed, my own youthful borrowing included buying my late wife a grand piano on an overdraft, a decision that underpinned 33 years of happy marriage. (And I paid off the debt after a struggle.)

The issue with debt is one of limits and sustainability, for both the individual and the wider financial system. The same, clearly, applies to government debt and corporate and financial sector leverage.

What the 2008 financial crisis and its aftershocks have taught us is that those limits may be closer than we think – and, once crossed, can lead to rapid and painful corrections.

He looks at the current situation in which we are seeing high levels of personal debt again:

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Caron Lindsay

David Miliband backs referendum on the deal and argues for social and political benefits of EU – how we can build on the growing anti Brexit consensus

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 13th August 2017 - 10:13 am

It’s one of the great what -ifs of our time. Would we still be in the same mess if David Miliband had won the Labour leadership in 2010? We’ll never know and there are arguments on both sides. His Blairist approach might have propelled a bigger drift of Labour supporters to populist UKIP but he might also have had a big enough impact on the arguments to shift us away from Brexit or even having a referendum on the EU in the first place. Of course, his leadership might well have stopped Cameron from getting a majority at all in 2015 and we would certainly not have been in this mess.

Today, Miliband makes a new intervention in the Brexit debate with an article in the Observer in which he becomes the latest big name to back calls for a referendum on the deal.

The case against the EU depends on avoiding a discussion of the alternative. It is the equivalent of voting to repeal Obamacare without knowing the replacement. It is a stitch-up. That is one reason it is essential that parliament or the public are given the chance to have a straight vote between EU membership and the negotiated alternative. That is a democratic demand, not just a prudent one.

People say we must respect the referendum. We should. But democracy did not end on 23 June 2016. The referendum will be no excuse if the country is driven off a cliff. MPs are there to exercise judgment. Delegating to Theresa May and David Davis, never mind Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, the settlement of a workable alternative to EU membership is a delusion, not just an abdication.

Brexit is an unparalleled act of economic self-harm. But it was a big mistake to reduce the referendum to this question. The EU represents a vision of society and politics, not just economics. We need to fight on this ground too.

The Europe of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel stands for pluralism, minority rights, the rule of law, international co-operation – and not just a single market. In fact, the real truth about the single market has been lost in translation.

He goes on to make the very valid point that the EU’s institutions protect our rights as individuals and as workers against exploitation from large commercial organisations and governments. As he puts it, the EU has actually done more to shield us from the effects of globalisation than to harm us:

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The Voice

WATCH: Vince talking about the financial crash

By The Voice | Thu 10th August 2017 - 8:58 pm

Here’s Vince on Good Morning Britain talking about the 10th anniversary of the financial crash. Could it all happen again? What does he think about the current state of our economy?

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Paul Walter

LibLink: Vince – “The old have comprehensively shafted the young”

By Paul Walter | Sun 6th August 2017 - 10:30 am

Vince has high prominence in the media this morning for his Mail on Sunday column about the Brexit age divide. Talking about Brexit “martyrs” who are prepared to risk economic hardship to “take back control”, he writes:

(A) concern is that the self-declared martyrs may be planning to sacrifice other people rather than themselves. It is striking that the martyrs appear predominantly elderly (indeed the YouGov poll confirmed that fact). This is unsurprising since 64 per cent of over-65s voted Brexit in the referendum and 71 per cent of under-25s voted Remain.

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Mary Reid

Meet Vince Cable

By Mary Reid | Thu 3rd August 2017 - 2:17 pm

Embed from Getty Images

The lovely digital team at HQ have interviewed Vince Cable.

He spent his childhood immersed in chocolate, it seems.

I grew up in York, which was then very much an industrial city. Its factories supplied the country’s railway carriages and fed its appetite for sweets. I grew up breathing the all-pervasive smell of sugar, cocoa and vanilla.

My first home was a small terraced house close to the Terry’s chocolate factory. My father Len was a craftsman at Rowntree’s chocolate factory whilst my mother Edith packed chocolates for rival firm Terry’s.

I arrived at the University in York at about the same time as Vince left for university and career, and I have fond memories of Tuesdays, which was chocolate making day at Rowntrees. Walking through the town was like being bathed in chocolate.

After Cambridge he ended up in Glasgow where he became a Labour councillor. He was one of the first Labour members to join the SDP.

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Paul Walter

Vince shines in exchange of barbs with Boris Johnson

By Paul Walter | Tue 1st August 2017 - 9:53 am

Embed from Getty Images

For me, the little exchange of barbs between Vince and Boris Johnson, over the weekend, is an early sign of what a great leader Vince will be for our party.

It was a bit like tennis.

Vince served brilliantly with:

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The Voice

LibLink: Vince Cable on the battle for LGBT+ rights

By The Voice | Sat 29th July 2017 - 5:08 pm

 

This week Vince Cable marked the 50th Anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality with an article in Pink News. He remembers the social context in which the changes happened.

The period that saw the introduction of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 left a powerful impression on me. It was around this time that I returned to the UK from Kenya with my now late wife, Olympia. She was Indian, and we arrived in a Britain snarling with the racism of Enoch Powell’s notorious “rivers of blood” speech. Intolerance was not merely tolerated by the state, but enforced by it, with immigrants, women and of course members of the LGBT+ community discriminated against in a way that is hard now to fully understand.

But it was also a time of social change, even ferment. My colleague David Steel piloted an act that legalised abortion that same year. And gay people could finally have sex without fear of prosecution (provided they were both 21 or over, and it was in private).

Looking back, the sheer level of bigotry is shocking. Even many supporters of the reform referred to homosexuality as a “disability”. By 1974, the number of arrests for gay “offences” had actually increased. It was not until 2001, after a defeat in the European Court of Human Rights, that the Labour government was forced to repeal the criminalisation of “homosexual acts”.

 He then looks at the Liberal Democrat record.
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Mary Reid

Want to see Norman Lamb in lycra?

By Mary Reid | Sat 29th July 2017 - 2:43 pm

It is dangerous for politicians to make pledges during an election campaign. I’m sure you all know what I am talking about – Stephen Tall’s pledge to run naked down Whitehall.

And then there was Vince Cable’s hat.

But Norman Lamb rashly said he would join a zumba class if he won his seat in North Norfolk, which, of course, he did.

But he did it!

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Jon Andrew

What we need from Vince

By Jon Andrew | Sat 29th July 2017 - 11:31 am

 

In terms of our national campaign, the 2017 election was a failure. Yes, we increased our number of MPs, but this was not because of a coherent and appealing overall message, it was because of 12 very hard fought local campaigns, and good strategic pooling of resources into target seats.

The leadership of the Party assumed that the main dividing line among the electorate would be Remainers vs Leavers, and so led with our vehement opposition to Brexit, but this did not resonate. Corbyn’s luke-warm-at-best Remain credentials did not put people off, and this is probably because the public themselves are a lot more luke warm on the issue than we are.

If I had to describe the mood of the country on Brexit right now I would describe it as “meh – let’s wait and see” rather than “let’s overturn the whole damn thing”. Indeed, a YouGov polling report published a few weeks before the election campaign started found that only 21% of the public favoured going against the result of the referendum. Perhaps this will change as the impact of Brexit on our daily lives becomes clearer, but for now, we have been making the wrong pitch.

But what is the right pitch? The most straightforward way for a third party to gain popular support is by painting the main two as the establishment options; too similar, too set in their ways of thinking, and then appealing to people’s frustrations by pitching themselves as the change from the norm. The difficulty here though is that the main two parties are not the same, and Corbyn is hoovering up all the anti-establishment sentiment in a way that we can’t compete with.

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The Voice

LibLink: Vince Cable on Corbyn

By The Voice | Fri 28th July 2017 - 7:30 pm

 

“Corbyn wants a hard-right Brexit. Progressives must fight back, not follow” – that is the uncompromising headline to an article by Vince Cable in today’s Guardian.

Vince claims:

It is a paradox not lost on many Labour MPs that while their leader is to the left even of Michael Foot, he has collaborated with the right more than any Labour leader since Ramsay MacDonald. Jeremy Corbyn’s insistence that Brexit means leaving the single market and customs union – unpicking Keir Starmer’s carefully woven tapestry of ambiguity – now puts him in the same place as Theresa May and Liam Fox. That place is to the hard right of British politics.

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Katharine Pindar

What should Liberal Democrats expect of our leaders?

By Katharine Pindar | Wed 26th July 2017 - 4:20 pm

 

Members are sovereign in the Liberal Democrat party. Members will be consulted on the overall party strategy at the next Federal Conference, prior to a motion being passed. Yet the party leader is expected, both by the membership and by the country, somehow to embody the image of the party. He or she is identified with its perceived success or failure by the media, regardless of how much control they may actually have had.

So what do we members think the first duty of the Liberal Democrat leader should be?

Surely he must show in outlining his political priorities that he is true to the party’s principles and values. This Tim Farron did, when elected in 2015. He said, for example,

We see people as individuals. The Liberal mission is to help us to be the best we can be. Standing up for the individual is not what we do – it’s what we are.

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Luke Reading

Two months with the Lib Dems

By Luke Reading | Wed 26th July 2017 - 11:10 am

 

Two months ago today I joined the Liberal Democrats amongst the peak of political campaigning for the general election (the first in which I was able to vote). Before this year I had seen myself as someone more on the right when it came to business and the economy but also felt strongly in favour of civil liberties.

As someone who has grown up in a Conservative stronghold in the South, and only really came to better understand politics under the Coalition government, I had always seen the Tories as the better choice out of the two major parties. Until the referendum last year, I was probably well on the route to putting a cross in the box next to Conservatives, not out of total agreement with Tory policies but seeing it as the lesser of two evils. When I found out the result of the referendum early the next morning, followed quickly by the news of David Cameron’s resignation, after the initial anger, confusion and disbelief, it left me reflecting on my own political stand point.

It emerged Theresa May would take over as Conservative leader several weeks later and earlier this year a general election was called for June. In the time from the Brexit result to the election being called, I found myself unable to be supportive of the Conservatives who had done nothing but shift rightwards on the political spectrum and witnessed a Labour party move much closer to its socialist roots. I was left unsatisfied with what the two major parties were offering, and so I looked elsewhere for inspiration.

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Bill Fowler

Vince Cable, the next PM?

By Bill Fowler | Tue 25th July 2017 - 10:15 am

 

As a fan of Mrs Thatcher it might seem odd that I have just joined the Liberal Democrats. However times change, hard right policies are more likely to drive the large number of people depending on in-work benefits or working in the government into the hands of Mr Corbyn.  Labour, who shout loudly about democratic mandates, are likely to have another go at bankrupting the country as well as bring democracy into disrepute by promising endless giveaways.

The worst possible case for the UK is to have a Labour government and be outside the EU. Labour want out of EU because they can then rape and pillage the slightly rich – anyone who cannot bite back. Given the pasting that the EU gets from our press it is actually surprising that, as far as citizens’ rights go, it actually does work – and seems to be improving in many areas. It would be ironical if Brexit forces them to reform further in the interests of its citizens rather than its bureaucrats.

I would probably have not joined up had not Vince Cable become leader; he at least talks some reasonable sense – most of the time. Now he has the amusing task of saving the country from itself. The current fickleness of the British voting public means just about anything is possible but it will mean swallowing some liberal pride to get there. Looking from the outside, there is one little trick that might placate half the Brexiteers and that is a very strict residence test before there is any access to benefits, social housing, in-work benefits and possibly the personal tax allowance. By strict I mean at least five years…

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Caron Lindsay

Vince’s manifesto shows just how far Tim took us

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 20th July 2017 - 8:55 pm

When Tim Farron stood for the leadership two years ago, his winning manifesto was quite internally focused. It had to be. We’d just had what could have been a mortal blow from the electorate. We were all in shock, devastated at the psychological impact of the loss of so many of our heartlands.

We knew we had to pick ourselves up, but in those early weeks, every time we tried to get ourselves off the floor, we couldn’t quite manage it. Then along came Tim with a jolt of electricity, a motivational message that energised us and got us going again. A lot of his manifesto was internally focused – about picking a ward and winning it, about tackling diversity, about how he’d make decisions in the party (with a diverse group of people in the room), and about having a festival of ideas. It was a time of innovation when newbies developed initiatives like Lib Dem Pint and Your Liberal Britain. But it was mainly internal.

Tim has left us in better shape and grew the size of the parliamentary party in an incredibly difficult election for us.

Vince’s manifesto is much more outward looking. He doesn’t really talk about internal stuff at all. It’s all about our positioning to the world.

He uses language about being ambitious for party and country that reminds me of Willie Rennie’s optimistic campaign in Scotland where we won two seats from the SNP. Where we could get that message out in sufficient volume, people liked it. It was full of heart and authenticity and optimism. People want something to look forward to.

Vince concentrates on five policy areas:

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Caron Lindsay

Vince takes the stage with a strong “Exit from Brexit” line

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 20th July 2017 - 6:07 pm

Vince is not our almost leader any more. Just after 4pm, Sal Brinton announced that there had only been one nomination received and therefore he was our actual leader.

Having one of the country’s most credible and authoritative experts on the economy at a time when the economy is at risk is no bad thing.

We will certainly see a change in style from Vince. He won’t be as Tiggerish as Tim, but he’ll fight the recklessness of the Tories and Labour and promote our Liberal Democrat values with energy and optimism.

Vince has huge intelligence, a way of telling it like it is that makes sense to people and a wicked sense of humour. I feel much more optimistic than I did on 9th June that we can actually get somewhere.

Watch this afternoon’s proceedings here. You can see speeches from Sal, Tim, Jo and Vince.  Some key points from Vince’s speech are below.

There is a huge gap in the centre of British politics and I intend to fill it. As the only party committed to staying in the single market and customs union, the Liberal Democrats are alone in fighting to protect our economy. It will soon become clear that the government can’t deliver the painless Brexit it promised. So, we need to prepare for an exit from Brexit.

Theresa May wants to take Britain back to the 1950s while Jeremy Corbyn wants to take Britain back to the 1970s. I will offer an optimistic, alternative agenda to power the country into the 2020s and beyond.

We have a government that can’t govern and an opposition that can’t oppose. Labour and the Conservatives have formed a grand coalition of chaos, driving through a hard Brexit which would deliver a massive blow to living standards.

Both parties have abandoned mainstream economics. I want to put economics back centre stage.

Under my leadership the Liberal Democrats will be at the centre of political life: a credible, effective party of national government.

We have doubled our membership and our new members have given the party enormous energy. I want to give leadership to that energy, hitting the headlines and putting our party at the centre of the national debate.

 

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The Voice

Cable: Hammond’s position on public sector pay unsustainable

By The Voice | Sun 16th July 2017 - 12:15 pm

Chancellor Philip Hammond was quite happy to tell Andrew Marr that his Cabinet colleagues didn’t trust him on Brexit, but not so quick to deny that he’d said that public sector workers were overpaid. Our shadow Chancellor and almost leader Vince Cable had this to say:

I am very surprised by Philip Hammond’s reported comment the public sector workers are “overpaid”. Who exactly is he talking about? Nurses? Teachers? Police officers? Servicemen and women?

There is very clear evidence of chronic shortages and recruitment difficulty in many of our essential services. Basic economics, let alone wider ideas of fairness suggests that Hammond’s position is totally unsustainable.

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David Warren

No country for old men?

By David Warren | Sat 15th July 2017 - 11:45 am

It doesn’t seem that long ago that the trend was for younger political leaders.

We had Blair, then Cameron, Clegg and Miliband.

Our American cousins elected the youthful Barack Obama as their President.

Ming Campbell one of the Lib Dem leaders in this period was thought too old by some and his age was clearly a major factor in his stepping down.

He was 66 at the time.

Oh how things have changed.

Labour’s Corbyn is in his late sixties, in the US the President is 71 and arguably his main opponent the excellent Bernie Sanders is 75!

As Britain’s Liberal party undertakes a leadership election it looks like the septuagenarian Vince Cable may be the only runner.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable on Lib Dem prospects: You could come from third to first really quickly

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 14th July 2017 - 8:40 pm

In an interview with the Guardian published tonight, Vince Cable sets out some lofty ambitions for the party:

I ask him what would constitute success for his leadership. “If there is a significant improvement in our vote share, and a sense that we are back in the frame as a serious party being listened to,” he says. He is not looking merely at picking up the odd seat – his age doesn’t permit him that incremental approach – but is more interested in driving up popular support. “You could come from third to first very quickly.” He is encouraged by Emmanuel Macron’s remarkable ascent and the appeal of “radical centrism” in France, and draws parallels with Britain. “The right had become discredited in France, while here the Tory brand is becoming discredited by the day, and there was also a reaction against the Mélenchon left.”

That’s a long way from where we are now, so under what circumstances can we get there? Well, the true cost of Brexit is going to become apparent:

Cable stands by his suggestion that we may never leave the EU. “The Brexit process is going to get very messy. I meet a lot of senior civil servants and they’re trying to be loyal, but their eyebrows rise. They just can’t see how it can be done. The government haven’t taken on board the complexity of unwinding 40 years of regulatory activity.” He says the row over Euratomis a taste of the chaos to come. “The Brexiteers are only just beginning to understand the enormous can of worms they have opened up.”

Does he see any form of Brexit that can work? “I’m increasingly pessimistic,” he says. He thinks there is a 50-50 chance that Britain will get a deal and transition period that safeguard the economy. “That could happen,” he says. “But I think there’s a very high risk of the whole thing falling apart and crashing out, with all the costs associated with it. It’s at that point that the second referendum becomes absolutely essential.”

If you like that kind of thing, there’s a delicious put-down of Corbyn:

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Joe Bourke

It’s time for an All Party Parliamentary Group on Land Value Taxation

By Joe Bourke | Wed 12th July 2017 - 10:55 am

The rioting in Hamburg on the occasion of the meeting of the G20 this month highlights the oftentimes violent confrontation that exists between alternative theories of capitalism and socialism, as represented by the established orthodoxy and those that would seek to tear it down.

 At the heart of this conflict lies differing interpretations of economic theory, often depicted simplistically as left v right; Keynes v Hayek; socialism v capitalism; social liberalism v economic liberalism; or progressives v conservatives.

Henry George’s Progress and Poverty envisioned a capitalism that would allow all people to own the product of their labour, but that things found in nature, particularly land, belongs equally to all humanity. 

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 36 Comments
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