Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast.
Speaker: Today we're joined by a very special guest, Savins Cable, and we're going to be discussing a bit of his life in politics and current political issues in the UK.
Speaker: Yes, so today we are joined by Sir Vince Cable and for our listeners who don't know, Sir Vince Cable was the leader of the Liberal Democrats between 2017 and 2019.
Speaker: He was also the MP for Twickenham as well as being the Secretary of State for Industry in the Tory Lib Dem coalition.
Speaker: Yes, it was called Business Innovation and Science.
Speaker: It was basically business, trade, universities and science.
Speaker: It was a big portfolio.
Speaker: And it's great to have you on the podcast as well today, Ben.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Well, thank you for asking me.
Speaker: So the first question is, sort of getting straight into it, do you think that the 2010-2015 Tory-Lib Dem coalition was a mistake?
Speaker: And if so, why?
Speaker: No, it was one of the best governments in modern history.
Speaker: I mean, after the chaos that we've had since 2016 with four prime ministers, no continuity, constant changes of policy, and the difficulties the Labour government has had in its six months in power with endless mistakes and problems,
Speaker: It was a period of remarkable stability.
Speaker: We had five years of uninterrupted government.
Speaker: I had my job for five years, which I think was the longest of any person in that job since the Second World War.
Speaker: And although the two parties were very different and we quarreled publicly about certain issues, we reconciled the differences and made decisions and got on and did them.
Speaker: And I think almost anybody who was
Speaker: around at that time remembers that was a period of remarkable stability and decision making.
Speaker: I mean, it was difficult because it was in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Speaker: So inevitably there was economic hardship at the time, but the economy was getting better by the time we'd finished.
Speaker: growth was returning, unemployment had fallen fairly drastically, there was very little inflation, the public finances were getting under control.
Speaker: The Lib Dems, unfortunately, we were sort of shafted by the Tories at the end of the coalition and we suffered a bad loss.
Speaker: But if you're judging the quality of the government, it was one of the best in modern times.
Speaker: Yes, so, I mean, really, I can understand, obviously, it was a very stable period in UK politics.
Speaker: And I think that is a worthy comparison when we look at what's been happening recently.
Speaker: But sort of drawing on that idea of the effects of the coalition, I mean, the Lib Dems obviously lost 49 seats.
Speaker: What do you think sort of went wrong in that 2015 election for the Lib Dems coming out of the coalition?
Speaker: Well, I think there are two things.
Speaker: I mean, there was the mere fact that we joined the coalition, which I think is something in retrospect we had to do because there was the only way to form a stable government and there was a national crisis, financial crisis at the time.
Speaker: I don't think we'd have ever been forgiven if we'd ducked out.
Speaker: We tried getting something with Labour, but there weren't the numbers.
Speaker: So what went wrong was that, of course, a lot of the people who vote Lib Dem tend to be basically Labour who vote against Conservatives.
Speaker: And once we were in a coalition of the Conservatives, we lost their support.
Speaker: And that was, I think we went into it with our eyes wide open and we realised that that was going to happen.
Speaker: And unfortunately it did.
Speaker: Then the second reason is, I mean, as we approach the 2015 election, all the polls were suggesting that the Lib Dems wouldn't do too badly.
Speaker: We would keep 30, 35 seats.
Speaker: We'd lose some, but not drastically.
Speaker: The problem is it all went wrong during the election campaign because the Tories ran a ruthlessly effective campaign, which basically consisted of
Speaker: sending very carefully designed letters on number 10 Downing Street notepaper to all our voters in places like Twickenham,
Speaker: and essentially saying that you may have an excellent Lib Dem MP, we've got no quarrel with him as an individual, but if you vote Lib Dem, you're going to get Red End Miliband and the Scottish National Party running the country, and people panicked.
Speaker: We were voted out in large numbers because of tactical voting to keep Labour out.
Speaker: In the latest election, we've learnt how to use tactical voting to our advantage,
Speaker: get rid of Tories, but they did it against us in 2015.
Speaker: So another thing that's happened since that coalition is obviously Brexit.
Speaker: And do you think that we should have a second referendum or should we try to work in the parameters that have been set?
Speaker: Well, the Lib Dems were a very strong Remain party and we were the leading party arguing for Remain and arguing that we should have a people's vote.
Speaker: In other words, not a second referendum, that we should have a
Speaker: what we call a confirmatory referendum to establish that the public were happy with the deal that the government had negotiated.
Speaker: And that never happened.
Speaker: I think it's now water under the bridge.
Speaker: There's no point going back to it.
Speaker: The European Union would not be interested in getting back together with Britain anyway.
Speaker: They spent five years of negotiation that did a lot of harm to Europe, quite apart from to us.
Speaker: So any
Speaker: The reunion with the European Union is going to have to be on a more piecemeal basis and it's going to take time.
Speaker: I worry that this government is missing an opportunity to do sensible things like the Youth Mobility Scheme.
Speaker: But if we go back to Europe, it will be a new kind of Europe.
Speaker: It won't be the same one.
Speaker: Countries like Ukraine will be members.
Speaker: There will be a different set of rules and we'll have to negotiate it.
Speaker: And if it does involve major constitutional change, there will then have to be a referendum on the subject.
Speaker: But I think we're talking 10 years away.
Speaker: It's not something in the near future.
Speaker: Oh yes, and also, I mean, listeners of our podcast will know that we had Douglas Carswell on a few weeks ago, who you obviously know, Vince, from being on, well, I guess, the quite opposite side of the Brexit debate.
Speaker: But why do you think that the UK should rejoin the UK, let's say, rejoin the European Union in the future?
Speaker: Or why should we have remained at the time?
Speaker: Well, there is no overwhelming public opinion.
Speaker: I mean, it was divided at the time, but there is now overwhelming public opinion.
Speaker: There's a few hardliners.
Speaker: Mr. Carswell is one of them who denied the obvious that it was a mistake.
Speaker: I say there is a minority who still cling to Brexit, but a large majority can see it was a mistake.
Speaker: It's done serious economic damage.
Speaker: Large numbers of British companies can no longer export.
Speaker: We've been effectively cast adrift, particularly in the new geopolitical environment.
Speaker: Britain is very much on its own.
Speaker: So, unfortunately, you know, we're stuck.
Speaker: And there isn't a need, as I said a few months ago, it's not easy to rebuild the relationship with the European Union.
Speaker: It's been destroyed and we're going to have to move on, however painful it is.
Speaker: Yeah, I do agree with that.
Speaker: I think it will be definitely hugely difficult to go back into the EU, especially at this time so soon after the Brexit, basically after the British exit.
Speaker: But also coming to another policy that sort of defined the Liberal Democrats, tuition fees.
Speaker: Would you still advocate for lowering tuition fees for degrees that are perhaps called the Mickey Mouse degrees nowadays?
Speaker: Well, it's a very pejorative term to say they're Mickey Mouse degrees.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: We considered whether we needed to differentiate one type of university from another, but thought it was an invidious choice.
Speaker: I mean, who is to say that Nottingham or Cambridge is a good university, but the University of Northumbria or Wolverhampton are Mickey Mouse?
Speaker: I mean, that...
Speaker: No sensible public figure can make that kind of rather insulting distinction, let alone embody it in policy.
Speaker: I think a lot of things about the tuition fee debate have been completely forgotten.
Speaker: The first was that tuition fees were introduced by the Labour government.
Speaker: They weren't introduced by the Liberal Democrat.
Speaker: The Labour Party promised not to introduce them, but did.
Speaker: And then they promised not to increase them, but did.
Speaker: The Liberal Democrats were in an unfortunate position and stupidly, and I say this as somebody who was involved at the time, stupidly promised to repeal them, which made no sense.
Speaker: And once we got into office, we put ourselves in an impossible position, which we suffered badly.
Speaker: grievously from politically.
Speaker: But the fact is that in 2010, the universities were going bankrupt.
Speaker: Large numbers of them were going to be forced to close, cut back on departments, make staff redundant, drastically cut the number of students.
Speaker: That was what was in prospect.
Speaker: And the only way to prevent that happening was to raise the fees, which, as you know, are not fees.
Speaker: I mean, basically, it's a form of income tax.
Speaker: You pay 9pm the pound on a student loan, but there's no upfront fees.
Speaker: And it was a much better outcome.
Speaker: And the universities have never had any of the austerity that's been experienced by the police or indeed by schools for that matter.
Speaker: So it was a sensible policy.
Speaker: Everybody agreed at the time it was a sensible policy, but it was, you know, we'd broken a promise.
Speaker: And that's the one thing that people remember about it.
Speaker: But going back to the idea of tuition fees, I mean, I think perhaps why people were so upset about the Lib Dems breaking that promise was because tuition fees are a huge burden on people.
Speaker: And as someone who I'm right in saying that you taught at university as well for a time, do you think that we should get rid of tuition fees in general?
Speaker: Or do you think they are helpful for universities financially?
Speaker: Of course we can't get rid of them.
Speaker: And who is going to pay for universities?
Speaker: And why should, you know, postmen, people who work in factories have to pay through taxation so that people who are already quite privileged can have a three year experience as a student?
Speaker: I mean, that would be absolutely outrageous.
Speaker: And that was recognized by the Labour government when they introduced tuition fees.
Speaker: There's no question in the revolution.
Speaker: And it's not a burden on students.
Speaker: I mean, students don't pay anything.
Speaker: You go to university, nobody asks you to pay tuition fees.
Speaker: When you leave...
Speaker: you have taken out a student loan and it's repaid according to your income.
Speaker: And if you have a low income job, you don't pay anything.
Speaker: That was the system we introduced.
Speaker: The problem has been what happened subsequently is that the Conservative government abolished grants and reduced loans for, not for tuition, but for maintenance.
Speaker: and large numbers of kids from poor families are having to take out much bigger loans than were necessary for fees.
Speaker: And that's what's called the worry.
Speaker: But I think we need to repeat the point that nobody pays fees for going to university.
Speaker: You pay 9p and a pound, effectively a form of graduate tax, once you've graduated and depending on your income.
Speaker: And in fact, one of the points that was always overlooked in the passion around tuition fees, that people were paying less in 2010 after we were in government than they had been under the previous Labour government.
Speaker: So going to your time as leader of the Liberal Democrats, how much influence did you feel that you had in your position as the leader of the third party in Parliament?
Speaker: It was terribly difficult because we'd lost a lot of MPs.
Speaker: I was rarely allowed to speak in Parliament.
Speaker: I was only given an opportunity to ask one question.
Speaker: every four weeks.
Speaker: The third party was normally allowed two questions a week, where you can then make an impact.
Speaker: Which is what the Scottish Nationalists had because the Scottish Nationalist vote was highly concentrated in Scotland and ours was dissipated across the country.
Speaker: Now we've got round that problem now and Ed David can make an impact.
Speaker: The Prime Minister's question, I didn't have that chance.
Speaker: And the media, of course, are not really interested in the third party.
Speaker: Even the lead of the Conservative Party now is finding it difficult to get media retention.
Speaker: We got absolutely none.
Speaker: And when I was leader, the main impact we made was through our leadership of the People's Vote campaign on Brexit.
Speaker: But it was very hard.
Speaker: I got far less publicity as leader of the Liberal Democrat than I did as the Business Secretary when media were happy to talk to you at any point in the day.
Speaker: So to sort of follow up about that, how much would you say that has changed now with Nigel Farage representing Reform UK in Parliament?
Speaker: Do you think Sered Davy will find it even harder to sort of get the Lib Dem message across now?
Speaker: Not necessarily, because one of the contributions that Nigel Farage has made, partly because he's a very effective populist politician, is that the right-wing vote, as it's called, is split in two.
Speaker: And that's very helpful to the Lib Dem.
Speaker: It's also helpful to Labour.
Speaker: So when we have to defend our 72 seats come the next general election, in all likelihood, we'll be facing two conservatives.
Speaker: Now, what might happen is that Farage takes over the Conservative Party.
Speaker: I mean, he clearly wants to do that.
Speaker: A lot of his activists have infiltrated the Conservative Party in the way that Jeremy Corbyn did with Labour.
Speaker: And it's quite possible that they may just complete a takeover and the Conservative Party will be subsumed into reform.
Speaker: I suspect that if that happens, they will get a short term boost because the two right wing parties will now be one.
Speaker: But in the long term, it won't help them because I suspect 60 percent of the British public would never vote for Farage under any conditions.
Speaker: partly because of Brexit.
Speaker: More generally, there isn't the same appetite, I think, for populist politics in the UK as there is in the United States.
Speaker: We don't have the same level of polarization and hatred between parties that the Americans have.
Speaker: So I think I wouldn't say we're sitting pretty.
Speaker: We have a lot of challenges.
Speaker: I don't think the Lib Dems have to worry about Nigel Farage.
Speaker: This is a worry for Kemi Badenow.
Speaker: How likely do you think it is that Farage will take over the Conservatives?
Speaker: I would give it quite a high probability.
Speaker: I mean, it could happen through various ways.
Speaker: It could happen through infiltration of the Tory membership, leading to an electoral pact, which Farage would dominate.
Speaker: It could happen simply through merger and takeover.
Speaker: I mean, there are different ways in which this could happen.
Speaker: I mean, I, as you know, I'm in Lib Dem.
Speaker: I got to the Lib Dems through the SDP, which is a breakaway from the Labour Party.
Speaker: And those two parties then had a pact initially and then merged.
Speaker: And we could see the same thing happening on the right of British politics.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, I personally think that is very likely that coalition because I think probably at the moment, Kemi Beidonok is fearful of that situation in which the right wing vote is split.
Speaker: More to do with the Lib Dems.
Speaker: Do you ever think the Lib Dems have a chance of being in Downing Street?
Speaker: And do you think Sered Davy is the man to do this?
Speaker: Well, we've been in Downing Street before, because we started this conversation talking about the coalition.
Speaker: So we've been in government.
Speaker: We know what it's like.
Speaker: We've actually provided a good, stable government.
Speaker: Ed Davey is a competent guy.
Speaker: I mean, he was in the coalition cabinet with me.
Speaker: He's had major responsibilities and was, I think, pretty effective.
Speaker: So why not?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As well as this, do you think that with the rise of Reform UK, the Lib Dems have a sort of easier path of being and remaining a third party in parliament?
Speaker: Or do you think it would be a bit harder, as we see now, Farage is gaining sort of a lot of media attention and making sort of the whole political game a bit more cloudy?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, the emergent farage is bad for Britain, but it's actually good for the Lib Dems and it's got a good for Labour.
Speaker: So, you know, there is, in modern times, I think a parallel was the growth of the French National Front in the 1980s when Mitterrand was the socialist president.
Speaker: And Mitterrand was very clever and he divided the...
Speaker: kind of fascist type National Front from the French Conservatives and he destroyed the French Conservatives.
Speaker: Now, that was actually rather good for him, but it was terrible for France because they're now faced with the possibility of a National Front government.
Speaker: And I think the same thing is true of Farage.
Speaker: I mean, it's terrible.
Speaker: prospect for the government, if that's what he ever became.
Speaker: But tactically, it's actually quite helpful to the Lib Dems and Labour, for that matter.
Speaker: So to finish our discussion as well, we were sort of reading through your biography and we noted that you were a Glasgow councillor.
Speaker: So we thought perhaps to ask you, should Scotland have independence?
Speaker: And by extension, also, what are the SNP's chances of being in power come their 2026 election?
Speaker: Well, the SNP basically destroyed themselves before the last general election.
Speaker: They lost most of their MPs.
Speaker: They will bring back support because people already get a disillusion with the Labour government, Westminster Labour government.
Speaker: And on the back of that, the SNP may well win back some of their seats at Holyrood.
Speaker: But I think they've long since passed the peak of
Speaker: that they had with Alex Salmon and subsequently.
Speaker: I think it's very unlikely we'll see another SNP government for quite some time.
Speaker: And people experienced when they were in power in Holyrood, they actually made a lot of mistakes.
Speaker: Things like there was a decline in the quality of schools, performance of the education system, the NHS went backwards.
Speaker: It wasn't a terribly popular government.
Speaker: But the problem with Scotland, and I go there quite a lot because I have Scottish in-laws who spend a lot of time there, is that emotionally there are a lot of Scots who got so alienated from successive British governments that they would go for independence and feel doubly aggrieved that they voted against Brexit and are stuck with it.
Speaker: So that, you know, 40%, 45% of the Scottish electorate probably do genuinely favour independence, but 40 to 45% is not a majority.
Speaker: And there's very little sign that it's going to get much beyond that.
Speaker: So I think the simple answer to your question is that...
Speaker: Scottish nationalism lead to independence is probably quite a long way off.
Speaker: I mean, we're going to go back to those arguments, particularly if we have a long period of Labour government that leaves them disillusioned, but it's not going to happen for the foreseeable future.
Speaker: So Vince Cable, thank you very much for coming on the podcast today.
Speaker: It was a fascinating discussion.
Speaker: We learned a lot more about the inner workings of Taleb Dems and some predictions for the future.
Speaker: Okay, thank you.
Speaker: Oh yes, and a big thank you for coming on as well.
Speaker: And we'd encourage all listeners to sort of have a read about Sir Vince and his amazing work with the Lib Dems and also to listen back to some of our past episodes.
Speaker: Okay, thank you very much.
Speaker: Thank you.
