Failed promises, opportunities

What a difference a year makes. Last May Vince Cable could do no wrong. Of course, this was in the context of a crisis; of course, he was the prophet of doom but such a straight-talking one who understood the public's anger at the banks and sense of betrayal by their politicians, and articulated it in plain terms.

"How we need him as our prime minister!" gushed one (Tory) commentator.

And now? Now he gets picketed when he goes to open ports. Now he is nearly just another Lib Dem, tarred with the disappointments of their first year in office: not just the retaining of tuition fees, but their increase, often to £9,000 (he, of course, is in the especially invidious position of being in charge of the department required to steward the change); the failure of the alternative vote; the budget cuts that in their disproportionate effect on the poor and vulnerable seem to put the lie to Lib Dem claims of social liberalism.

Compromise after compromise, and, most distressingly of all, for many, a muzzling of St Vince. To be fair, Cable, particularly recently, has sometimes allowed frustration to get the better of him.

Inheritance

Cable, now 68, once said that what he inherited from his father was the addiction of workaholism (adding, interestingly, that he got from his "mother, until I lost it, self-effacing modesty") and one can see that it would come in useful in his new role. When we meet, in standard class on the 9:23 to Birmingham, he has already done the Today programme. His speech about the Business Growth Fund is short, to the point, and hits all the right notes: "It's a good day for business, and a good day for Birmingham [where the fund will be based]"; the companies the fund will target those with an annual turnover of £10-£100 million "are the real drivers of growth"; "all wisdom does not reside in London".

But there is an obvious question: why aren't individual banks doing this as a matter of course? Hasn't that been one of the fundamental things Cable, especially, has been demanding all along that they should support growth rather than looking instead to bolstering salaries and their own bottom lines?

Bankers sometimes seem to be the only people in the country whose wages are increasing in real terms, while Cable would be the first to point out that not only are the rest of us seeing our wages falling, and basic services being gutted all around us, but we do not understand the coming scale of the squeeze on living standards.

He lays a lot of that blame with Labour's two Eds, whom he sees as regressing to comforting but entirely unhelpful tribal politics. "They are in a state of denial that there is a big structural problem with the UK economy. So we stick to this short term, tit for tat."

— Guardian News and Media Ltd