Cable: We'll only work with Labour after the next election if it is the largest party

seb

What if Labour merely has the most seats in Westminster but is massively outvoted by the Conservatives in England and, by a smaller margin, outvoted in the UK? Vince. Over to you. What is it? Seats [fraudulent advantage] or votes [people's choice].

Mister Jabberwock

Surely the Lib Dems support for proportional representation should mean that they would work with the party that gets the largest number of votes rather than seats?

Tiberius

Clearly a man and party of high principle!

mckenzie

It becomes quite evident that if they indeed do have any ideological direction, then it has nothing to do with ideology.

David Boothroyd

Seb puts his hand on a major contradiction in Vince Cable's statement. The Lib Dems regard the first past the post electoral system as unrepresentative and demand it is changed, yet seem prepared allow it to guide them absolutely over coalition negotiations.

Travis Bickle

Given the way Labour and Lib Dems cooperate to keep majority Conservative councils out of local power Cable is being deliberately misleading. There is no way that they would not cooperate in coalition if their combined seats put them in power, even if Conservatives had most seats.

David Belchamber

Isn't the headline a bit misleading, given what Cable was actually quoted as saying?

Also, won't he be in trouble with his leader for not suggesting that the Lib Dems were now ready for government themselves?

Rex Burr

It is interesting that the Liberal Party spokesman is seen to be Vince Cable and not necessarily its elected leader.
Mr Cable clearly represents credibility in Westminster.
I would not however vote Liberal because they have been taken over by the Greens. Within a year of Liberal influence in Government petrol would £1.5 a litre and rising.

strapworld

Does it not show what kind of man this charlatan is!

He wears a style of hat to attempt to copy Ken Clarke. He is a man desperate for power at any price.

If Brown offered him the Chancellor of the Exchequer's job he would take it today.

I wish Brown would as we would all find out what a useless individual he really is. He will not be able to stand on the fence facing both ways then, would he.

Verity

God, they're a pain in the neck. I wish they'd go away. I'd rather have the Monster Raving Loony Party than these lofty prats.

James Strachan

I think that any Conservative councillor or activist, who has been on the receiving enf of LD opportunism, would find it difficult to work in coalition with LD's.

We must work to win absolutely and to have no truck with LD's.

David Barker

Some years ago, some senior LibDem figure suggested that English Nationalists were a threat to the Union. I think the same LibDem 'think tank' must have dreamed up this latest irrelevence, for should the nightmare scenario of a minority Labour Government arise, propped up by LibDem support, it will be at the cost of the people of England, who constitute well over 80 percent of the UK population, who will have voted for a Conservative Administration just like in 2005 - but almost certainly even more decisively. The last thing we need is another Lib/Lab pact, especially as it is these two parties who have done far more than anyone else to create and nurture the festering boil which is the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

TGF UKIP

Blimey! To think it takes not just one but two hackettes to write such an absurd piece of hagiography.

The most amusing part though is the emergence from under his stone of this new political personna, DOCTOR Cable now no less!! What a 22 carat plonker.

His great good fortune, which, to be fair he has taken every opportunity to cash in on, is that with the post being effectively unoccupied for the past few years he has been able to effortlessly assume the role of Shadow Chancellor with all the attention that the post commands.

Given his ruminations a week or so back on a government of national unity, it is not too difficult to see where all this might be leading.

McFall has been speaking about sub £10k incomes being taken out of income tax in the Budget and the LibDem policy is also for tax cuts at the bottom paid for confiscatory taxes on "the rich" such as removal of 40% tax relief on pension contribs, something which is right in line with Gordon's class war mindset. (Mind you it's arguably right in line with the Blue Labour mindset too bearing in mind Dave's no savings relief for "rich" 40% tax payers taxpayers.)

Gordon's determination to keep the Tories from office knows no bounds so co-opting the LibDems for his Economic Warfare National Unity Project would not be a complete surprise.

Or might Doctor Cable cross the floor!

PS Is there any better definition of a complete pillock than a holder of a non medical Phd calling himself "Doctor"? (And unless I am very much mistaken it's usually economists who do it. QED)

Austin Barry

"It would be arrogant for us to choose one or other. Whoever gets the largest number of seats . . . whether it is Conservative or Labour, we will work with either.”

The Lib-Dems are a living paradox: resolutely
onanistic eunuchs.

drewboy_uk

TGF UKIP - If Vince Cable has a PhD then he has earned the right to be titled Doctor and his use of it certainly doesn't make him a pillock.

Personally, I think this is a good bit of business by the LibDems - not kyboshing a potential link with Labour without committing to it either.

Max Kaye

Cable should avoid politics and stick to jokes.

Verity

Drewboy - Wrong answer. It makes him a pillock. This is a German habit, and it spread to the United States where there is no lack of pretentiousness.

It does not apply in Britain, Canada, Oz, New Zealand, India, Singpore, Malaysia, and points north, south east and west. It's a German and American habit and, I might add, a bad one.

Austin Barry

Wasn't it Joan Littlewood who would always honour the pretentious with a "PhD in Bollockology"?

Step forward Dr. Cable.