Conference has just listened with rapt attention to shadow chancellor Dr Vince Cable MP. As Sal Brinton pointed out in her introduction, Vince has had an amazing time of it in the last few months following events largely unforseeable as recently as the last conference.

So delegates were very keen to show Vince their gratitude, and burst into applause simply at the mention of his name, and continued for a number of minutes after he got to the podium. Vince – apparently a Stalin expert – joked this was because he was deploying the old Stalinist technique of peppering the hall with agents and shooting the first to stop clapping.

The jokes continued – he said the Tories have an Alzheimer’s strategy for the next election, and hope the electorate will forget what Tory government is like. Mind you, he also said, that the core Tory voters are dead millionaires – at least if their inheritance tax policy is anything to go by..

But there was clearly a serious side to the speech too. He reaffirmed our current tax policy – we think as a country we’re taking about the right amount of tax, we’re just not spending it right and not raising it fairly enough. He was robust on issues such as inheritance tax, tax-dodging non-doms and corporate tax avoidance schemes such as Tesco’s recent scheme which has cost the government £10 for every taxpayer in the country.

At the end, conference were swift to get on their feet for a standing ovation as he left, both for a speech that was a splendid restatement of our entire fiscal policy and much of our social views, and a mark of respect for the great job he did at a difficult time as interim leader.

Vince comes back to conference at 4.25pm today to sum up an emergency motion on Sustainable Banking – a motion which is essentially “Conference notes that Vince Cable was right all along”

UPDATE: You can read the speech in full on the party website:  Vince Cable’s Speech – updated link