Britannia Radio

Like most people I find Cable eminently likeable but Philip Dunne is 
absolutely right to point out that he is a fallible economist even if 
a first class human being.

Read this and take him seriously as a politician!    In fact judging 
by how much he disagrees with his leader he is in the wrong party!  
He's somewhat unfathomable!
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[nb a 'cable' is about 100 fathoms]
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CONSERVATIVE HOME Blog 9.4.09
There's nothing invincible about Vince
Philip Dunne MP

Philip Dunne is MP for Ludlow, winning the seat from the Liberal 
Democrats in May 2005.  In this Platform article he examines the 
reputation of Vince Cable MP, the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman.

For a politician to become a national treasure can be a mixed 
blessing. It must be nice to think you are held in higher esteem than 
the average politician. But - as President Obama is discovering - it 
is impossible to maintain universal popularity once you have real 
responsibility. So affording national treasure status may turn out to 
be an act of passive aggression: the public like you on a personal 
level, but have decided it is time for you to shuffle off the main 
stage. This is a comparatively civilised form of enforced retirement.

Just occasionally, though, a figure in public life can touch a nerve. 
They can become a national treasure yet still be considered a player. 
This allows them to enjoy that most precious of positions: being 
taken seriously and given lots of media attention without being 
troubled by inelegant probing questions or normal scrutiny. The 
Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman Vince Cable finds himself in 
this enviable situation.

Indeed Dr Cable - who has recently published a book entitled The 
Storm: The World Economic Crisis & What it Means - is now treated by 
much of the media as an impartial commentator and sage, rather than 
as a fallible and partisan politician. Good for him; not so good for 
democracy.

It is not hard to see how this has happened. Dr Cable has an 
avuncular and plausible manner and has shown a deft touch in the 
House of Commons, famously saying Gordon Brown had morphed from 
Stalin into Mr Bean. He was a professional economist, which doubtless 
boosts his credibility as the economy takes centre stage - even 
though our experience of Cabinet ministers with economics degrees has 
not been an invariably happy one.

As a Liberal Democrat MP, Dr Cable is most unlikely to take charge of 
a Government department. So journalists are perhaps tempted to think 
there is no point questioning him too closely. But that is surely 
disrespectful. Vince Cable deserves the same rigorous examination as 
a Conservative or Labour spokesman in Parliament.

VINCE CABLE SAYS ONE THING, HIS PARTY SAYS ANOTHER
Alas, a search of his speeches leaves one rather less convinced of 
his infinite wisdom. His lack of consistency makes him look all too 
distressingly like the arch-stereotype of a Liberal Democrat - 
someone who will say whatever appears to be popular at the time.

When the new banking regulatory regime was established by Chancellor 
Brown, the Member for Twickenham assured the House of Commons in June 
1999 that "No one is arguing for an increasingly severe, more onerous 
and dirigiste system of regulation". Last year he recognised that the 
"investment banking model needs to overhauled". This has been quite a 
journey, one that others have travelled, but hardly smacks of the 
consistency or good judgement being demonstrated by Conservative 
spokesmen at the time.

One of the few areas in which the Liberal Democrats have been 
consistent (albeit wrong) is the euro. But even this policy has come 
unstuck. In January LibDem leader Nick Clegg advocated British entry 
into the single currency to increase financial stability. A week 
later Dr Cable (perhaps emboldened by his higher poll ratings) 
slapped his Leader down, suggesting that the euro might actually 
collapse:

"It remains to be seen if the Euro zone does any better in this 
crisis.  Its more vulnerable members have the opposite problem to the 
UK: they cannot use monetary independence and a floating exchange 
rate to adjust.  The Euro zone may or may not survive the strains 
being put on it."

It seems only a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman could flatly 
contradict his Leader on a matter of such central importance and 
continue to act as one of his principal spokesmen.

Public expenditure is another fraught topic. In September Dr Cable 
told his party conference that there was "a mood of austerity" and 
"an intolerance of binge lending by banks and binge spending by 
government". The following month he told the BBC "It is entirely 
wrong for the Government to assume that the economy should be 
stimulated by yet more public spending rather than tax cuts." Yet in 
December his party called for a £12.5 billion spending spree on 
social housing and railway lines and energy efficiency for homes, 
schools and hospitals.

This would supposedly be financed by scrapping the VAT cut. But as 
some of the measures would take five years to implement and VAT has 
already been cut, the LibDems' sums simply don't add up. So much for 
the good doctor's assertion in November that: "We need a stimulus 
that will be funded".

WRONG ON NATIONALISATION
In February 2008 he called for "temporary public ownership" of 
Northern Rock to "safeguard taxpayers' interests". The following 
August, by which time it had become clear that nationalisation had 
gone horribly wrong, he rather lamely said: "the Government and the 
regulators were badly deceived by Northern Rock's former managers 
when they agreed to bail it out on the basis that it was a good bank 
with a good loan portfolio."

Only last week during a debate on the economy, he repeated his call 
for full nationalisation of the banks in which the taxpayer already 
has a controlling stake. In the same speech he argued that the "asset 
protection scheme.which I argued at the outset.is a fraud against the 
British taxpayer". Commentators seem reluctant to point out that if 
the banks are wholly nationalised the British taxpayer will become 
liable for all the toxic assets held by these banks, not just those 
submitted to the scheme he distrusts so much.

WRONG ON PENSIONS
In 2006 the Liberal Democrats proposed abolition of tax relief on 
pension contributions for higher earners. This policy was variously 
described by pensions experts as "extremely flawed", "pointless", 
"catastrophic" and "simply not practical". It is also at odds with Dr 
Cable waxing lyrical in January this year on "the need to maintain 
(and strengthen) a long-term savings culture for retirement".

He is not alone in identifying the US mortgage market as the trigger 
for the global economic crisis. Asked if he issued any warnings, he 
admitted "No, I didn't" before launching into an extraordinary mea 
culpa: "one of the problems of being a British MP is that you do tend 
to get rather parochial, so I wouldn't claim to have any feel for 
what's been going on in the States".

It is admirable of Vince Cable, who is a nice man, to admit that he 
isn't omniscient after all. The time has come for the rest of us to 
take him at his word, and extend him the courtesy of being treated 
like a normal politician.