Cable, Cameron and speaking out in public
Peter Hoskin 4:32pm
For the foreseeable, Vince Cable is going to be a political barometer figure:
journalists and other innocent bystanders will sift through everything he says to check the temperature of the LibCon coalition. In which case, they'll find little to excite or worry them in his
cool interview with the Newcastle Journal today. The Business Secretary says all the
right things about staying his role for the full five years ("that's my intention, yes") and about the internal dealings of the coalition ("it works in a very business like
way"), even if he does quash the idea of a full merger between the two parties. It's all unsurprising, uncontroversial stuff.
Indeed, the passage which most caught my eye is when Cable claims that there is "no friction" between him and Downing St over an immigration cap, after his comments on the matter last week. As he puts it:
Cable may have an optimistic view of how his Tory colleagues regarded his public intervention on immigration policy. But that intervention is certainly bathed in a different light after Cameron's Q&A in Birmingham on Tuesday. If the Prime Minister can put forward policy ideas that haven't been formally cleared with his coalition counterparts, then it seems more reasonable for Lib Dem ministers to do likewise. Cameron called it a "debate" on his roadshow tour today. Perhaps that is something we have to get more used to."The point I have been making, and very much with David Cameron's support, is that the way it is implemented has got to flexible. And it has got to take account of the needs of business."
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davidk
August 5th, 2010 5:32pm Report this commentThe left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. That's the lesson of the past couple of weeks.
Mr L
August 5th, 2010 6:18pm Report this commentActually I rather like it, after all the years of the Blairite and (even worse) Brownite thought police.
TGF UKIP
August 5th, 2010 7:12pm Report this commentThe hacks as usual are watching the wrong man. The first to bail out will be either Huhne or the nonentity at the soviet repubic: "Och I cannae support these sassenach cuts targeted agin ma ain folk."
TrevorsDen
August 5th, 2010 9:59pm Report this commentThere must be a number of junior LibDem ministers praying that Huhne resigns.
Government is not about yes men - it is about debate and discussion. Only desperate journalists play this up. But where were these people when we had real personality driven dissent in the Brown cabinet?
Cable has always seemed surprisingly on side to me. Possibly a coalition might make reshuffles less likely; I hope so.
GaryTW
August 6th, 2010 8:37am Report this commentJournalists are just going to have to get used to coalition government and what it means.
Ministers will sing the same hymn just to slightly different arrangements
Steve Tierney
August 6th, 2010 11:06am Report this commentThere's nothing at all wrong with vigorous debate. If we can get back to that rather than this top-down authoritarian government style that Labour so enjoy that would be a great thing.
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