I may not always agree with Vince Cable, but I always want to know what he thinks about international economics because he always has relevant, interesting and well-researched observations. So when he came to the Edinburgh Book Festival on Wednesday, I really wanted to be there to see him talk about his new book “Eclipsing the West: China, India and the forging of a new world.”

The last time I’d seen him in Edinburgh was when he appeared on Iain Dale’s All Talk on a miserable lunchtime in front of a fairly small audience. So I was delighted to see that there was a massive queue for his show, though I was not so delighted to be at the end of it. It was interesting that I didn’t spot very many Lib Dems among them, though I found out later that they had occupied the front couple of rows.

The Book Festival used to be located in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square, but has been in the new Edinburgh Futures Institute since last year. I loved the old venue and was sceptical about this one but the courtyard is lovely, the theatres much more comfortable and the toilets infinitely better than the old portable ones. It’s more challenging for me to get to but it is in the heart of the Festival. The Futures Institute is part of the University and is in the renovated old hospital building on Lauriston Place.  I and my family have this location app and the first time I was at the Book Festival I got a message from my sister asking if I was ok as she thought I had been murdered and dumped in a storage container as the Google Earth images the app uses are a bit out of date and show when it was a building site.

Anyway, back to Vince. He was interviewed by the BBC’s Douglas Fraser, but there wasn’t really much for him to do. It was more like a lecture as Vince took us through slides charting how China and India’s economies were growing at a rate that would have them well ahead of anywhere else within the next 75 years. He looked at what this meant for the world order and predicted that we are in for a bit of a turbulent time. The world needs someone to lead it and as the US steps back, and nobody is ready to assume the responsibilities it carries out, who is going to be in charge of keeping key international institutions and work going – critical things like dealing with climate change and international trade.

He made the point that both India and China had told Trump to take a running jump with his tariffs. China had been able to get its tariffs reduced because it had the minerals the US needed. It is maybe a lesson, though, for people who think that sucking up to him is a good idea.

He contrasted key differences in the way China and India were run and looked at the challenges for both of them. He said that while the Chinese leadership still cracked down on dissent, they were allowing more debate about certain issues. He cited the recent controversy over a young woman being expelled from a Chinese university because of her relationship with a foreign man. There has been some outrage on social media in China about this.

He looked at ways the changes in world influence could pan out, unfortunately not ruling out unpredictable chaos as a result of Trump’s behaviour.

It’s quite depressing to see how our status has gone way down, thanks to Brexit. Our economy is going down the world rankings while all 27 EU states create another powerful bloc.

Vince touched on Brexit, saying that it had been a disaster for us, and also for the EU who had been less effective since we left.

He also talked about how he would love to see Africa developing in the way India an China had but couldn’t see it as there was no real co-ordination and collaboration amongst the individual countries.

The session is available to watch online. You can do so for free, though you will have to wade through a few requests for money before you get there.

His book isn’t actually published for another couple of weeks, but they had them for sale in the Festival bookshop so I now have a signed copy. It was great to catch up with Vince and he did say that he might write more for us.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social