Both Labour and the Tories need to get stuck into Vince

Edward

It says so much about the television age that a man like Cable can become famous on the back of one (admittedly funny) joke about Gordon Brown.

Tiberius

He's the horse in our political pantomime. He's been dining out on his Stalin/Mr Bean gag (a decent one at that) for some time now, but the free meals really should be running out by now.

He is a prime example of how a theme can run and run, no matter how superficial it is. But the media won't like Labour and the Tories shouting for him to "get off".

HFC

Are the 31% who say they are in favour of Cable the same rump who say they will vote for Labour in the GE? Thought so.

Irene

Didn't Ben Brogan say that Cable invited himself to the Treasury and only stayed 20 minutes, but the headline yesterday suggested he had been summoned - he really is getting away with murder and the media are letting him!

Hopefully he will be found out during the debates.

Dirty Euro

Jealousy form the tories.

Catesby

Cable's eminence, his status as some sort of magus, is almost entirely manufactured by the BBC. They present him almost as a disinterested, expert commentator. He seems to be on the whole time.

Austin Barry

There is always a place in government for a man with smirking self-regard, from the Messiah Obama to St. Vince of Twickers, but, honestly, isn't there something slightly disturbing, bogus and absurd about a ballroom dancing economist?

Chris lancashire

Your headline is dead right - Cable is currently the most overrated politician. Before he flip flopped on HBOS he did exactly the same on Northern Rock and his fiscal policies are unclear and uncosted. The fact that he's got away with it so long is down to his excellent TV manner which, sadly, proves that in politics, as in much else, presentation rates more highly than substance for a lot of the voting population.

TrevorsDen

Yes but infatuation is blind and are there any points to be gained by shattering a poor girl's (ie the fluttering eyelids of the electorate) illusions?

Bare in mind that still leaves 69% unimpressed. But without the great sage we must indeed ask where would the LDs be given the rest of their dim witted leadership?

Charles

I think this is dervived from the overall supportive media tone and a lack of detailed scrutiny.

As long as the mainstream media doesn't challenge him, the vast majority of the public won't pick up on it.

It seems to me arrogance is his biggest weakness - his overselling of the meeting with the Treasury for instance or floating the idea of being Chancellor in a coalition. There is no way that either major party would give up the Treasury - it's simply too important. The FDP in Germany regulary gets Foreign Secretary: the Lib Dems are more significant than the FDP, so suggest that they could reasonably expect Foreign or Home + one other middle level position (say defence or social security). Possibly Education if it is a Labour led coalition, but not if it is a Tory one.

denis cooper

So what does Clarke's reputation rest on?

Apart from not being the hapless, can-carrying, Lamont, the one who had to stand outside the Treasury and announce the end of a catastrophic policy which had been supported by Clarke?

Dan Brusca

The difficulty with attacking Cable is that because he's approaching national treasure status attacks could be seen as bullying and actually increase his popularity.

sinosimon

but of course the canonisation of saint vince by (primarily) the bbc was inevitable. once the intellectual and actual bankruptcy of the lunatic brown was so vast as to no longer be supportable even by the media wing of the labour party an alternative hero had to be found. it was of course impossible that the tories could in any way be talking sense in the eyes of the marxist fellow travellers at broadcasting house(after all they didn't go to the trouble of installing the son of a labour lord as economics corresponent to have him admit spending less could ever be a solution) so the mantle had to fall on whichever non-entity was currently burbling for the irrelevant libdems. step forward the shy and retiring vince. give him his due his has ridden the wave well, but like all surfers he is finding the froth comes to an end eventually. i can only hope it is he that hits the reef, and not the british economy as a result of the unhappy circumstance that he is ever let near a lever of power.

Roy Simpson

The Lib Dems have told us for years that we should be at the heart of Europe and join the Euro.

Their current web site tells us:- "Membership of the EU remains vital if Britain is to reap the benefits of globalisation, but face its challenges with confidence. Britain has much greater influence on the world stage when it works within a strong Europe. The EU offers us safety in numbers and this is why best place for Britain remains at the very heart of Europe".

Support for euro membership has, it appears, been quietly dropped, no doubt realising along with the rest of us that our awful financial situation would be even more dire were we to have taken their advice.

Perhaps a humble apology on their behalf from Mr Cable would be in order?

M. Rowley

Cable's profile is in large measure due to the BBC 'bigging him up' and endowing him with a status that he doesn't merit. All part of the corporation's group-think mentality which elevates and promotes those whom they see as sharing the right sort of opinions.

The Slogger

It's Mandelson the Tories need to get stuck into, not Cable.
"We mustn't be hasty" a political contact advised me in the aftermath of the cash-for-legislative-perversion 'sting' of yesterday. I don't see the haste involved in firing somebody whose professional conduct has now been brought into such obvious question. If the man in charge of Business stands implicated in yet more funny business, he should go immediately.

Although his Lordship is now busily (I hear) writing some interesting bits to alleviate the boredom of listening to Alistair Darling's Budget speech, his Business Ministry site shows Mandelson still actively encouraging banks to lend money they don't have, and encouraging Britain's entrepreneurs to invest in a future most of them can't see. With not a peep from the Prime Minister about the scandal in general or his 'ally' in particular, surely the Opposition should be asking why?

There are only two defences against this viewpoint I can imagine the Business Minister launching, and they are both risible. The first would be that Stephen Byers is a mad fantasist who simply isn't credible - and has already issued an email saying he didn't mean much of what he said. Were this true, we would be entitled to ask why he was a prominent Minister in the Labour Government in the first place, but the fact is, it clearly isn't true: a specific and enormously powerful commercial concern (Tesco) was named by Byers, and one person familiar with the events involved has already described Byers' boast during the Channel Four interview as "pretty much as I remember things happening at the time".

The second would be that Lord Mandelson was merely alerting the legislators involved to a fault in their labelling laws - and thus doing his bit to cut red tape in the drive to ram home our 'recovery'. But this too does not hold water. People must surely ask why he went on the word of a man thought by many to be an idiot (why didn't Tesco go through proper channels?) and also why Byers described Mandelson as having 'fixed it'. This is the language of secret influence, not correcting faults - the very same secret lobbying gravy train these four clowns were trying to grab a share in.

This time, there is no chance for Peter Mandelson to be given the 'jury ignorance' of past behaviour awarded to ordinary criminals on trial. One of The Slog's 2010 predictions was that the year would see this man embroiled in yet more murky goings-on, because this hastily ennobled peer is always involved in things of an unsavoury nature. He lied about Brown's personality, lied about this site's political affiliations (we don't have any) and most important of all, is lying at the moment about there being any real private sector recovery.

One gets the sense, ever since this clever - but profoundly silly and vindictive - man took revenge on George Osborne about Vodka Palace gossip last Autumn, that the Tory Party walks in fear of him. Certainly, Mandelson himself boasted of this on his return, telling the media how "the Conservatives are terrified of me running the election". For once in his wasted and cloud-covered public life, I think we can assume that he was telling the truth.

The Opposition has shown a distinct lack of killer instinct in this, the election that dare not declare its name. George Osborne has broken that spell on the economic side of things, but here in Slogger's Roost we are still left wondering what on earth is holding David Cameron back.

The Conservative Party is being offered a golden opportunity here - with the Moral Tone himself about to get involved - to make Lord Mandelson yet another Labour liability. They should call for his head now, before the Budget - and then watch Brown squirm in his denial of the clear case for it.
http://nbyslog.blogspot.com/

2trueblue

I am sure Cable is a nice man but can not think where he has garnered his reputation from. The BBC and others have credited him with foreseeing the present recession. As an avid follower of the economists of the time I have no recollection of Cable saying anything of great consequence during the run up. There were 4 to 5 economists who were warning that we were in dire trouble and were accused of talking Britain down. No one was interested. There were very few people who got there finances out of commercial property and equities. Those of us who talked about the problems were told to go take a pill!
I have more respect for those who are up front and admit that they had little idea that it was so bad than those who let others fawn over them for something that they did not know about, but take credit for.

Mark Senior

Yes please , let's have Cable attacked by both Labour and the Conservatives . It will draw more attention to him and the LibDems and the current 31% figure will move up to nearer 40%

Stuart

Have a look at Ben Brogan. It appears that far from being summoned to the Treasury this lieing opportunistic toad asked for the meeting and was given a polite 20 minute hearing. Lib Dems never spin of course.

Richard

I see!....The tories want Labour to help them destroy Saint Vincent.

Would it be too much just to ask boy George to improve his lackluster performance?

VC is held in high regard basically because he is straight forward and not tainted by Ashcroft or Unite (vested interests both)
There is a curious situation here in that the tories admit that their man is not up to the job (Shameron even openly telling the electorate he is not so critical that he is expendable) but would force him on the public should they win enough votes in the GE.
Lets see what comes out of the budget and then look at this again.

ollie

Cable's canonisation has always been a mystery to me. I do not believe he is a serious politician, nor a serious economist. He seems to pop up on the BBC as a sage-like guru - and consequentally, does not come under anything like the scrutiny Osborne or Darling do.

And anyone who thinks he could somehow become chancellor is deluded - the guy who empties my bins on a Tuesday morning has more of a chance than Cable - oh, and he too predicted an economy based on huge house price increases and a credit bubble would burst - along with probably millions of others.

denis cooper

Some of these comments are very amusing.

There seems to be no realisation that Cable was only able to turn himself into the preferred opposition spokesman on the economy because the Official Opposition spokesman had nothing to say.

But of course all that has changed, now that Osborne has been miraculously transformed into an economic genius.

TrevorsDen

Do not talk rubbish Mr Cooper - or better still, spare us your usual bigotry. As others have said the 'great sage's posturings were exposed by Neil.

Stephen

The official Opposition have had plenty to say about the economy, Denis Cooper, eg "fix the roof while the sun is shining" but it is all too different to Labour policy for Brown's Biased Chums' purposes. Cable is a former Labour councillor and his "stopped clock is right twice a day" ramblings suit the media narrative.

JONNY

Apart from rescuing the economy
and leaving it such a healthy state that Brown kept to his figures for the next couple of years,
I seriously don't know denis cooper.

Simon Stephenson

HFC : 1.17pm

"Are the 31% who say they are in favour of Cable the same rump who say they will vote for Labour in the GE? Thought so."

I suspect it's more likely that they're the rump who always "support" whoever is the popular favourite at the time. After the election, when the LibDems go back to the province of irrelevance that they inhabit 90% of the time, Cable's value to the media will disappear, because he's now, demonstrably, one of the losers. His name will no longer sell papers, the media will largely ignore him, and his "support" will drop back below 10% where it always is when he's not being promoted as a possible winner.

Meanwhile, the 20% - 25% who have deserted him will have found a new Messiah, who will be, as if by magic, the latest media front-runner.

Wait and see.

Sir Everard Digby

Richard. Cable -well respected? He does have a genius for predicting events after they happen. Check out the Lib Dems own site and the Guardian for a wide range of views about why he is no more than an opportunist. He knows he has little chance of being in power so he can say pretty much anything and no-one bothers to challenge him.He also has a book to sell.

What is the Lib Dems economic policy today? What will it be tomorrow? I lost count after 11 about turns in the past two years.

The saddest aspect is that you are willing to hang your hat on anything anti-tory however inept it may be.

David Ossitt

Dirty Euro

“Jealousy form the tories”

Jealous of what; exactly?

He is a liberal and therefore has no chance of being in power, and so, he can rabbit on with his populist theorise, safe in the knowledge that he will never ever have to put any of them into practice.

Liz Brown

I have no faith in the posturing Vince - the only thing he seems capable of is getting himself on the Telly - to be frank, I want to hide every time I hear/see him

David Ossitt

If he will not go now; leave these pages and never return; if he must write his socialist drivel, drop by ever more poisonous drop.

Then I do wish that the circumcised one, would stop his school boy practice of giving those he most dislikes such childish soubriquets.

Frank P

"Both Labour and the Tories need to get stuck into Vince".

Is that a direct invitation from him, or are you his pimp, David? Either way, as he's a member of the Liberal Party no doubt he would enjoy the gang-bang.

TomTom

Whoever becomes Chancellor will not be a PHD in Economics from MIT or Harvard or Princeton or even LSE....that is only in the Third World that qualified Economists get to be Finance Minister because they need credibility with Western banks.

Meanwhile West Europeans will have lawyers as Finance Minister or neophyte politicians, but never anyone with any background in the subject. It is part of the amateurish nature of British politics that noone with knowledge or specialist training gets to implement and initiate policy, and that is why Britain went from being the world's richest economy to one of the top 20.

The venom reserved for Vince Cable on this thread may be justified, but it is motivated purely by tribal partisan politics of the kind that has ruined this country and made it such an unpleasant place to live. Frankly no politician can resolve this mess because when US consumer demand collapses the global economy will lurch into Slump and China will implode....Vince Cable cannot resolve this reality, nor can any Finance Minister on an overcrowded offshore island pretending to be Gibraltar or Malta

Jean Monnet

Vince Cable: just the man if you want to join the euro.

Chuck Unsworth

@ The Slogger

Nicely done.

old fogey

To Denis Cooper; Kenneth Clarke is the most succesful Chancellor of the Exchequer in my lifetime (i'm 52);Ithink only the 'dead sheep' Geoffrey Howe can claim a commensurate lustre. That is Mr Clarke's claim to be awarded respect.

stephen

When St Vince, Darling and Osborne have a debate soon on C4 I hope Boy George in his most grown up way can shred the Sage of Twickenham into little pieces. It's long overdue for him to be exposed as the Fellow Traveling Socialist he is, with his roots in the old Labour party of envy! Mansion Taxes snide comments about the City and Non Dom's etc,
Go for it George!

John Moss

Treasury have confirmed briefing of Cable was at his request and held in accordance with usual courtesies in advance of an election.

The man is delusional about his own staus just as he is about economics!

Dorothy Wilson

The people who say they would like Cable as Chancellor are those who won't face up to the reality of the mess we are in. They think he would take the "middle road" and all the nasty stuff and squabbling would disappear. Read Max Hastings in Saturday's Mail [Mail Online/columnists].

These people are in for the biggest rude awakening when the mess Brown has landed us in begins to bite [and that's putting it politely!].

John David Barnett

There is no such word as "noone".

Nick

Vince is an ex Labourite and a member of the Fabian Society.
That's all I need to know.

Marcher Baron

@ denis cooper "So what does Clarke's reputation rest on?" The fact that he handed over an economy in good condition for Gordon Brown to squander.

denis cooper

@ Trevorsden - So what's your definition of "bigotry"? Something like "Refusal to mindlessly parrot whatever line is currently being pushed by the Tory leadership"? In that case, nobody could ever accuse you of being a bigot.

@ Stephen - Yes, Osborne's economic understanding is pretty much on the level of "failed to fix the roof while the sun was shining", and even that sound bite is not original but copied from Clinton. And before him Kennedy, but with "repair" instead of "fix", or as we're more likely to say here "mend". Pity that Osborne didn't point out that the roof needed mending while the sun was still shining, but then it's always easier to appear wise after the event.

@ JONNY & old fogie & Marcher Baron - I'd be fascinated to know the basis for your claims about the incomparable brilliance of Clarke.

Clarke was one of those who had pushed for us to join the ERM - Lamont described his own position as "agnostic - very mildly in opposition" and "ambivalent" - and despite that costly fiasco Clarke has supported, and still supports, joining the euro.

After Black Wednesday it was Lamont who took the flak - Major described him as his "lightening conductor" - and it was Lamont who had to pick up the pieces, setting up a new monetary policy based on the Bank of England setting interest rates to meet a target for domestic inflation. He even privately advised Blair and Brown that if they won the 1997 election they should give the Bank operational independence - which they did.

It was Lamont's 1993 budget that started the process of eliminating the budget deficit, and left his successor, Clarke, with the makings of that "golden economic scenario" which was passed on to Brown.

So in the end the man who put the pound into the ERM, Major, made a scapegoat of the man who had to deal with the disastrous consequences of that policy, Lamont, and replaced him with a man who would rather that the pound ceased to exist, Clarke, who then had the much easier task of presiding over a recovering economy.

If Clarke had been Chancellor during the period that Lamont was Chancellor and had then been succeeded by Lamont, it would have been Clarke who became one of the most hated politicians in the country, and we wouldn't now have to put up with all this revisionist nonsense about his brilliance.

annassasin

Labour and lib will attack Osbourne. He is seen as a liability in the eyes of the public. Vince will do what ever he is told to keep his image. He has already joined in with the wait and see policy of labour (brown nosing or what). Sadly I doubt that Osbourne will be able to cope with an attack from both sides. He may be able to win on detail; he will lose on overall image. As always image has more effect on the great unwashed than facts.

Charles

TomTom wrote

"It is part of the amateurish nature of British politics that noone with knowledge or specialist training gets to implement and initiate policy, and that is why Britain went from being the world's richest economy to one of the top 20."

Actually, if you check the facts (and I am an economic historian by background) the UK was only ever the world's richest economy as the result of a historical anomaly - that we were the first to develop. Once that first mover advantage had been eroded (as was inevitable) then the natural resource advantages of the US or Germany were bound to overtake us.

Simon Stephenson

I would, if I may, like to correct what appears to be a fairly widespread misunderstanding of how government works. This is the assertion that trained economists such as Cable would be better equipped to run the Exchequer than would non-economists such as Osborne and Darling. This assertion, in its general form of "we'd be better off having Ministers who are experts in the area they are running", has been made so often that it has become part of mass mythology.

Well I'm sorry, but it's complete nonsense. We don't slect people to supply expertise to their Departments. The expertise is provided by highly-trained permanent staff, and it's no more than a remote possibility that any elected official would be able to stand side-by-side with them in their areas of competence. Sure, Cable's an economist, but in technical discussions about the financial/economic management of the country he'd be a total makeweight alongside the top mandarins at the Treasury.

No, the purpose of the elected official is to provide political input to the decision-making process. To represent the public, and to ensure that the administration provided by the civil service reflects the democratic preferences of the people.

So let's please have a bit less of this crap that the political heads of the Exchequer, Defence and Health should be economists, generals and doctors respectively.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Charles

As an economic historian you'll be able to put a few dates up to support your position, won't you?

Richard

@Davey Wotsit

I need your help in your post "Soubriquets"
would they be a new designer charcoal for posh Torie Barbies?

2trueblue

denis cooper. All parties were in favour of joining the ERM. The Tories got us out and the economy did not look back, until Brown/Blair cme along and spent all the advantages that were left by the tories.

David Ossitt

Richard

“I need your help in your post "Soubriquets"
would they be a new designer charcoal for posh Torie Barbies?”

Richard; there you have a first, that is actually a very clever play on words, well done.

By the bye; on another thread, how did you know about my problem?

Or was that just a calculated gues?

Andy Leeds

Cable has been almost entirely created by the BBC, who when requiring an opposition spokesmen call on him rather than on a Conservative who consistently get over 37% and nearer 40% in opinion polls. They give this deluded fool far too much air time, but 'twas ever thus.

denis cooper

@ 2trueblue - The Tories certainly took us into the ERM, but "the Tories got us out" is a rather peculiar way of describing what happened. It might be more accurate to say that "the Bundesbank got us out".

Barry Allen

Has anybody bothered to look at his tenure as chief economist at Shell? There must be some skeletons there.

old fogey

Denis Cooper; there's an awful lot of 'ifs' in your recent blog; and no one would quibble with your points about Norman Lamont.

Moriarty

@denis cooper

I can only think of one politician who was more enthusiastic about our ERM membership than Clarke.

He's currently, though not for much longer, resident at 10 Downing St.

denis cooper

old fogey @ 8:28 am - No, there aren't any awful lot of "ifs" in that post, there are just two - "... if they won the 1997 election ...", and more importantly "If Clarke had been Chancellor during the period that Lamont was Chancellor and had then been succeeded by Lamont, it would have been Clarke who became one of the most hated politicians in the country... ".

Moriaty @ 8:48 am - And yet as Chancellor he effectively blocked us joining the first wave of the euro. Maybe he just wanted to retain full power while he was Chancellor, or maybe unlike Clarke he learnt something from the ERM fiasco.

Incidentally last night I watched Clarke, Mandelson and a LibDem on Newsnight, and for somebody who's supposed to be a "big hitter", a "big gun", etc Clarke's performance was poor. It didn't help that most of the time he was agreeing with the obnoxious Mandelson.

bob

Just deeply stupid and completely out of his depth

PayDirt

Charles: and what were the “natural resource” advantages that Germany had over the UK at the time? OK the US is clearly way ahead on Resources, however the main point about nations such as Germany is surely the Human Resource, that is their work and saving ethic. And this brings up a point about Immigration, which subject provokes a lot of comment on the site. Is not the UK significantly improved with hard-working immigrants (over previous decades, even centuries), and the fact that there is a mass of poorly educated UK citizens with poor employment prospects is a product of the Competitive environment which holds sway in this country, and the rest of the real world come to that. The lamenting of the Right that this country is being over-run by non-British immigrants may have something to so with the dream of a return to a Golden Age of Britishness, but is not much use in forward planning. This is definitely a political hot-potato which neither Party wants get imbroiled in for fear of offending potential voters. I see that UK university applicants now have to compete with applicants from the EU who reportedly have a better grasp of the English language than more than a few UK applicants. Keep the doors open, welcome qualified in-comers and stop pitying the home-grown losers. They will learn soon enough.

Andrew Baker

This article is a disgrace. During an economic crisis, Vince Cable is a widely-respected figure who has proven to be correct time and time again and acted as a voice of reason as George Osborne has floundered and Alistair Darling has fabricated economic figures. But simply because he is not a Tory and is popular David Blackburn feels it is justified to attempt to tear at a decent man's reputation. This article is a disgrace: it condones an attack on the most trusted politician in the country merely because of his popularity. Shame on you David Blackburn.

David Bouvier

Andrew Baker - if that is satire it is not very good satire. Those of us with a memory (or google) and a smattering of economics are not fooled so easily.

If you have not actually gone and looked at the (now 2 times) Andrew Neil has - casually - destroyed Vince's pretensions then go and do so.

As Cable admitted in the original Andrew Neil interview - he did not predict, and he flip-flopped.

David Bouvier

2trueblue - LibDem's and Labour both supported the ERM. If there was internal debate it was not obvious.

Thatcher - having the benefit of proper economist Alan Walter's advice was opposed to it but was forced into accepting membership as her power waned by europhiles in the party. A great many of the party were opposed.

Not a perfect record, but remember LibDems and Labour were dead wrong.

The instability predicted by Walter's appeared and led to an expensive forced exit, trashing the parties reputation - thanks Europhiles.

Brown at least but his '5 tests' in the way of joining the Euro and stopped Blair - blithely concerned only with the politics and not the economics - from joining. There was much speculation at the time that Brown's motive was simply to delay Euro entry until he was PM - though I doubt he would admit that now.