Vince Cable has certainly had a good recession. On the television more than most cabinet members, and more than his own party leader, and now with two books under his belt: The Storm, published in April this year, an account of the financial crisis, and Free Radical, an account of his own life.
Starting in 1943 in York, born to aspiring middle-class, socially (and politically) conservative parents, Vince progressed to Cambridge and then to academia, local government, the Foreign Office, special adviser, thinktanks and Shell before finally being elected to parliament in 1997 at the age of 54. Vince’s marriage to Olympia is described in detail, and his clear love and devotion to her is the backbone of Cable’s story. Her death, in 2001, is the most moving and harrowing part of the book, and Olympia’s desire to keep her cancer (which killed her gradually after a 15-year battle) hidden, was clearly very difficult for Vince personally and politically – especially in the 24-hour, television-camera-in-the-kitchen world of politics.
What the book achieves in terms of a personal memoir, however, it sometimes lacks as a political drama or an account of Cable’s political philosophy. Cable is known to us all as the man who saw the credit crunch coming (although that is not entirely accurate) and as a rare politician who can turn economic argument and technicality in to something more concrete and comprehensible. But because this book follows Cable’s account of the financial crisis, The Storm, by only a few months, the most important part of his political career – responding to the credit crunch – is largely ignored.
The book also loses something as a political tract with its treatment of Cable’s political allegiances. Cable hopped between being a socialist at school, a Liberal Democrat at university, a Labour councillor and activist for 20 years, and then joining the SDP in 1981. As a Labour councillor in Glasgow, Cable was regarded as being on the left of the party – playing key roles in resisting the withdrawal of free milk in schools, increases in council rents and the closure of a shipyard in Govan. In the 1970 general election he stood in Glasgow Hillhead and contributed, along with Robin Cook, to Gordon Brown’s 1975 book The Red Paper on Scotland, with a chapter on entrenched poverty in Glasgow. Although from a middle class background and working as a university lecturer, Cable supported many union campaigns and ‘took considerable pride’ in marching with Tony Benn and Jack Jones through Glasgow. Although he bowed out of Glasgow politics to take a job in London, Cable resurfaced as a special adviser to John Smith and in 1979 attempted to get selected to fight a ‘safe’ Labour seat.
But then, in 1981, despite his initial ‘negative’ reaction to the SDP breakaway, and feeling ‘more comfortable with mainstream Labour figures like John Smith and Dennis Healey …. than with Roy Jenkins and David Owen’, he left. This decision was not inevitable and it is not clear what really persuaded him to leave the Labour party. Indeed, Cable reflects that: ‘It is quite possible that had I stayed in Glasgow I would have remained in the Labour party.’ Yet, this choice only receives one paragraph of reflection in Free Radical. For 20 years Cable had been a Labour activist and a better understanding, including on whether he ever harbours regrets – for example, when John Smith became leader – could add something to our understanding of political history and the importance of choices in politics.
So, what of Cable’s future political career? It is clear from the last chapter, ‘Stormy Waters and Unfinished Business’, that Cable is ambitious about his own future. In the final paragraph, he says he draws ‘encouragement from the fact that some of our greatest leaders came in to their political prime in the sixties or seventies’. What could he mean?
Cable believes he could, and perhaps should, be the leader of the Liberal Democrats. And indeed prime minister. Commenting on his attacks on Brown, he writes: ‘I think that at the core of it was a suppressed rage: the feeling that I could be doing his job, and doing it much better.’
And while the Liberal Democrats are being squeezed between the two main parties (despite Cable’s cult status), they could still be the power brokers the day after the general election. What would Cable do in such circumstances? In an interview earlier this year in the Times, he was explicitly asked what he would say if Cameron were to ask him to be his chancellor? The answer: ‘No, that’s not on. You can rule that out.’ So, if he’s not going to join the Tories on the front bench, would he contemplate serving a Labour prime minister? Cable hints at his political ambition to ‘complete the work I first embarked upon as a student politician trying to bring together and reconcile the different strands of what is loosely called progressive politics’. An indication, perhaps, that he would be willing to join up again with the party he served back in Glasgow.
‘The fiscal crisis and toxic legacy of the banking crisis will dominate economic policy debate for a long time to come’, Cable argues. And he is surely right. Cable expects to be ‘centrally engaged in that debate’ (whether in government or opposition). I anticipate that contribution to come from opposition – and I sense that is where Cable is better suited temperamentally. But, as in the last two years, Vince Cable will have a lot to contribute and whoever is chancellor would do well to listen to the best of his economic prognosis and prescription.