Can a party leader born under Winston Churchill at the height of the Second World War save liberalism in the 21st century? There are some who say that Sir Vince Cable is too old to lead a political party. In fact, he is now only the same age that Gladstone was when Vince first met him.
Confirmed yesterday as Lib Dem leader at the age of 74, Sir Vince insists he brings energy, enthusiasm and experience. He also brings recognition: people at least know who he is, and are inclined to listen to what he says.
He can crack the occasional joke too. Yesterday in his acceptance speech he offered qualified support to Philip Hammond, the Remainer chancellor, as a “political adult”, at a time when “you’ve got Boris Johnson in short trousers, and Liam Fox in nappies”.
It has taken some time but after several abortive attempts to oust Nick Clegg, Sir Vince is finally going to take over from a failing, unpopular Lib Dem leader, and his old mate Matthew Oakeshott hasn’t had to spend a penny on polling.
Clegg used to claim he needed two elections to get the Lib Dems to 100 seats, and change politics forever. In one election he got them into power, and perhaps destroyed the party forever instead.
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Tim Farron’s leadership might be best remembered for gay sex and smelling spaniels (though not at the same time) but he did at least take on the job when almost nobody wanted it, massively increased the membership, and took them from eight seats to 12 in two years.
Sir Vince believes that as many as one in four people share the Lib Dems’ values, but just 7.4 per cent voted for them in June’s election (down from 7.9 per cent in the 2015 wipeout). There is now a “gigantic space” in the middle of British politics, he says, with “basic common sense and moderation and mutual respect” lacking at the moment. He’s not wrong, though trying to win back the pro-Brexit West Country — a former Lib Dem heartland — while holding pro-Remain Twickenham now seems like a pipe dream.
He plans to paint Jeremy Corbyn as the Pied Piper leading his followers blindly towards a hard Brexit, branding his “Venezuelan socialism” economic policy “wildly unreal”.
He also rules out having anything to do with the Conservatives, which does rather raise the question of what is the point of voting for a party which refuses to countenance the idea of having any of its policies brought into reality.
As Lib Dem economics spokesman, Sir Vince built a reputation as something of an economic sage, having predicted 12 of the last three recessions. Now he says he will not put his “reputation as Mystic Meg” on the line by predicting Brexit definitely won’t happen, but is willing to entertain the possibility.
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“It will soon become clear that the government can’t deliver the painless Brexit it promised,” he said yesterday. “So, we need to prepare for an exit from Brexit.”
Interestingly, he thinks Farron got the message right that people should be given a second say on Brexit, but it was premature. He thinks the Lib Dems need to sit and wait for the tide to turn against Brexit. We’ll see.
He knows Theresa May well, from their repeated clashes when he was business secretary, most notably over including students in immigration numbers. May would often phone him late at night when the first editions of the newspapers dropped and demand: “What have you done now, Vincent?”
After losing his seat in the 2015 Lib Dem bloodbath, he got to spend more time ballroom dancing and put pen to paper on a novel. A thriller. Open Arms is, we’re told, going to break on the world in the next couple of months and contains “very discreet sex scenes”. It makes the perfect follow-up to his After the Storm, which was all about how the economy was screwed.
He still hopes to take part in the national ballroom dancing championships in Blackpool in November. Maybe his old foe Ed Balls can give him some choreography tips.
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The British Macron he is not. It is unclear whether he is the right man to galvanise anxiety over Brexit and turn it into an alternative political force, or if the Lib Dems are destined to spend a generation as a nice but irrelevant small party of protest.
He has spent the last few weeks predicting that Brexit might not happen and comparing May with Hitler for her comments about “citizens of nowhere”. He later apologised and admitted he should have said Stalin.
Which presumably is just the set up for him to use his first PMQs in September to marvel at the prime minister’s transformation from Stalin to Mrs Bean.