Cable, Cameron and speaking out in public

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:

“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.”

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.