The Liberal Democrats are doing fairly well in the polls at the moment, in particular in the marginal constituencies. In my view this is largely as a result of John ‘Vince’ Cable, the treasury spokesman.
Formerly an adviser to Labour Party chief John Smith, Cable stood for the Labour Party unsuccessfully in Glasgow Hillhead in 1970. He joined the Social Democratic Party when it spun away from Labour in the 1980s and the Liberal Democrats when the SDP merged with the Liberal Party in 1988.
Cable is a likeable man and made a name for himself when as stand-in leader he accused Gordon Brown of moving rapidly ‘from Stalin to Mr. Bean’.
Cable seems to run a remarkable spin operation, with many people believing that he, and he alone, forecast the financial crisis. What in fact he did do was to warn, in 2003, that consumer debt was too easy in Britain, and that it was secured on unsustainably high house prices. Many others did, too, notably the Conservative Party. Cable was right, but it was no great shakes. He could have read it in the newspapers. Cable did not go so far as to advise higher interest rates. Gordon Brown was keeping interest rates low – even changing the definition of inflation to stop the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England from raising them – to keep house prices rising and everybody happy.
At the same time Cable was urging the Government to join the euro, which he has now admitted was not sensible advice: ‘there are various things that we have learnt about euroland, and about the eurozone, which are clearly problems that need to be resolved.' Many of us had been saying it was a disastrous policy but 'Vince' wouldn't listen.
Cable’s spin operation went wrong recently when he let it be known that he had been briefed by the Treasury as a possible future chancellor and that he was ‘ready to serve’ (a phrase drawn, I think, from Paris Hilton’s unsuccessful and brief campaign to be President: I'm ready to, like, serve). The Treasury fed out to the media that the meeting had been at his request and that they had not been briefing a future chancellor.
As regards the rest of the recession Cable has admitted in his book that he had no idea what was going on in America. In fact he hadn't come close to what was happening.
For me, as I have said before, the writing does not go all the way through. Cable is a help to his party because he gives them credibility by looking like some sort of sage. Both Labour and the Tories need to find him out, which in my view shouldn’t be difficult.
Formerly an adviser to Labour Party chief John Smith, Cable stood for the Labour Party unsuccessfully in Glasgow Hillhead in 1970. He joined the Social Democratic Party when it spun away from Labour in the 1980s and the Liberal Democrats when the SDP merged with the Liberal Party in 1988.
Cable is a likeable man and made a name for himself when as stand-in leader he accused Gordon Brown of moving rapidly ‘from Stalin to Mr. Bean’.
Cable seems to run a remarkable spin operation, with many people believing that he, and he alone, forecast the financial crisis. What in fact he did do was to warn, in 2003, that consumer debt was too easy in Britain, and that it was secured on unsustainably high house prices. Many others did, too, notably the Conservative Party. Cable was right, but it was no great shakes. He could have read it in the newspapers. Cable did not go so far as to advise higher interest rates. Gordon Brown was keeping interest rates low – even changing the definition of inflation to stop the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England from raising them – to keep house prices rising and everybody happy.
At the same time Cable was urging the Government to join the euro, which he has now admitted was not sensible advice: ‘there are various things that we have learnt about euroland, and about the eurozone, which are clearly problems that need to be resolved.' Many of us had been saying it was a disastrous policy but 'Vince' wouldn't listen.
Cable’s spin operation went wrong recently when he let it be known that he had been briefed by the Treasury as a possible future chancellor and that he was ‘ready to serve’ (a phrase drawn, I think, from Paris Hilton’s unsuccessful and brief campaign to be President: I'm ready to, like, serve). The Treasury fed out to the media that the meeting had been at his request and that they had not been briefing a future chancellor.
As regards the rest of the recession Cable has admitted in his book that he had no idea what was going on in America. In fact he hadn't come close to what was happening.
For me, as I have said before, the writing does not go all the way through. Cable is a help to his party because he gives them credibility by looking like some sort of sage. Both Labour and the Tories need to find him out, which in my view shouldn’t be difficult.
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