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S3 Episode 7: In conversation with Sir Vince Cable
3 Plays3 months ago
Today John and Dejan are joined by former leader of the Liberal Democrat’s Sir Vince Cable. Tune in to hear them discuss the Lib Dem’s, Reform UK and more!
We do also encourage all viewers to leave a comment and let us know what you think about the episode!
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Transcript
Introduction to Sir Vince Cable's Political Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast.
00:00:04
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.
00:00:18
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.
00:00:30
Speaker
He was also the MP for Twickenham as well as being the Secretary of State for Industry in the Tory Lib Dem coalition.
00:00:40
Speaker
Yes, it was called Business Innovation and Science.
00:00:43
Speaker
It was basically business, trade, universities and science.
00:00:50
Speaker
It was a big portfolio.
00:00:53
Speaker
And it's great to have you on the podcast as well today, Ben.
00:00:55
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:56
Speaker
Well, thank you for asking
Was the 2010-2015 Coalition Government Successful?
00:00:57
Speaker
me.
00:00:57
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?
00:01:07
Speaker
And if so, why?
00:01:09
Speaker
No, it was one of the best governments in modern history.
00:01:12
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,
00:01:33
Speaker
It was a period of remarkable stability.
00:01:35
Speaker
We had five years of uninterrupted government.
00:01:39
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.
00:01:47
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.
00:01:59
Speaker
And I think almost anybody who was
00:02:01
Speaker
around at that time remembers that was a period of remarkable stability and decision making.
00:02:10
Speaker
I mean, it was difficult because it was in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
00:02:15
Speaker
So inevitably there was economic hardship at the time, but the economy was getting better by the time we'd finished.
00:02:24
Speaker
growth was returning, unemployment had fallen fairly drastically, there was very little inflation, the public finances were getting under control.
00:02:37
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.
00:02:46
Speaker
But if you're judging the quality of the government, it was one of the best in modern times.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yes, so, I mean, really, I can understand, obviously, it was a very stable period in UK politics.
00:03:01
Speaker
And I think that is a worthy comparison when we look at what's been happening recently.
00:03:06
Speaker
But sort of drawing on that idea of the effects of the coalition, I mean, the Lib Dems obviously lost 49 seats.
Impact of Coalition on Lib Dems' 2015 Election Performance
00:03:14
Speaker
What do you think sort of went wrong in that 2015 election for the Lib Dems coming out of the coalition?
00:03:22
Speaker
Well, I think there are two things.
00:03:23
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.
00:03:39
Speaker
I don't think we'd have ever been forgiven if we'd ducked out.
00:03:43
Speaker
We tried getting something with Labour, but there weren't the numbers.
00:03:48
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.
00:03:58
Speaker
And once we were in a coalition of the Conservatives, we lost their support.
00:04:03
Speaker
And that was, I think we went into it with our eyes wide open and we realised that that was going to happen.
00:04:09
Speaker
And unfortunately it did.
00:04:11
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.
00:04:22
Speaker
We would keep 30, 35 seats.
00:04:25
Speaker
We'd lose some, but not drastically.
00:04:27
Speaker
The problem is it all went wrong during the election campaign because the Tories ran a ruthlessly effective campaign, which basically consisted of
00:04:41
Speaker
sending very carefully designed letters on number 10 Downing Street notepaper to all our voters in places like Twickenham,
00:04:53
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.
00:05:09
Speaker
We were voted out in large numbers because of tactical voting to keep Labour out.
00:05:17
Speaker
In the latest election, we've learnt how to use tactical voting to our advantage,
00:05:22
Speaker
get rid of Tories, but they did it against us in 2015.
00:05:28
Speaker
So another thing that's happened since that coalition is obviously Brexit.
Brexit and the Future of UK's EU Relations
00:05:33
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?
00:05:40
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.
00:05:53
Speaker
In other words, not a second referendum, that we should have a
00:05:57
Speaker
what we call a confirmatory referendum to establish that the public were happy with the deal that the government had negotiated.
00:06:04
Speaker
And that never happened.
00:06:06
Speaker
I think it's now water under the bridge.
00:06:08
Speaker
There's no point going back to it.
00:06:11
Speaker
The European Union would not be interested in getting back together with Britain anyway.
00:06:16
Speaker
They spent five years of negotiation that did a lot of harm to Europe, quite apart from to us.
00:06:23
Speaker
So any
00:06:25
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.
00:06:35
Speaker
I worry that this government is missing an opportunity to do sensible things like the Youth Mobility Scheme.
00:06:42
Speaker
But if we go back to Europe, it will be a new kind of Europe.
00:06:47
Speaker
It won't be the same one.
00:06:48
Speaker
Countries like Ukraine will be members.
00:06:51
Speaker
There will be a different set of rules and we'll have to negotiate it.
00:06:56
Speaker
And if it does involve major constitutional change, there will then have to be a referendum on the subject.
00:07:02
Speaker
But I think we're talking 10 years away.
00:07:04
Speaker
It's not something in the near future.
00:07:08
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.
00:07:21
Speaker
But why do you think that the UK should rejoin the UK, let's say, rejoin the European Union in the future?
00:07:29
Speaker
Or why should we have remained at the time?
00:07:32
Speaker
Well, there is no overwhelming public opinion.
00:07:36
Speaker
I mean, it was divided at the time, but there is now overwhelming public opinion.
00:07:41
Speaker
There's a few hardliners.
00:07:43
Speaker
Mr. Carswell is one of them who denied the obvious that it was a mistake.
00:07:50
Speaker
I say there is a minority who still cling to Brexit, but a large majority can see it was a mistake.
00:07:57
Speaker
It's done serious economic damage.
00:08:00
Speaker
Large numbers of British companies can no longer export.
00:08:05
Speaker
We've been effectively cast adrift, particularly in the new geopolitical environment.
00:08:11
Speaker
Britain is very much on its own.
00:08:14
Speaker
So, unfortunately, you know, we're stuck.
00:08:20
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.
00:08:26
Speaker
It's been destroyed and we're going to have to move on, however painful it is.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, I do agree with that.
00:08:33
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.
Were Tuition Fees a Necessary Compromise?
00:08:47
Speaker
But also coming to another policy that sort of defined the Liberal Democrats, tuition fees.
00:08:55
Speaker
Would you still advocate for lowering tuition fees for degrees that are perhaps called the Mickey Mouse degrees nowadays?
00:09:04
Speaker
Well, it's a very pejorative term to say they're Mickey Mouse degrees.
00:09:08
Speaker
It's...
00:09:11
Speaker
We considered whether we needed to differentiate one type of university from another, but thought it was an invidious choice.
00:09:19
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?
00:09:30
Speaker
I mean, that...
00:09:31
Speaker
No sensible public figure can make that kind of rather insulting distinction, let alone embody it in policy.
00:09:40
Speaker
I think a lot of things about the tuition fee debate have been completely forgotten.
00:09:45
Speaker
The first was that tuition fees were introduced by the Labour government.
00:09:48
Speaker
They weren't introduced by the Liberal Democrat.
00:09:52
Speaker
The Labour Party promised not to introduce them, but did.
00:09:57
Speaker
And then they promised not to increase them, but did.
00:09:59
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.
00:10:13
Speaker
And once we got into office, we put ourselves in an impossible position, which we suffered badly.
00:10:20
Speaker
grievously from politically.
00:10:22
Speaker
But the fact is that in 2010, the universities were going bankrupt.
00:10:27
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.
00:10:36
Speaker
That was what was in prospect.
00:10:39
Speaker
And the only way to prevent that happening was to raise the fees, which, as you know, are not fees.
00:10:46
Speaker
I mean, basically, it's a form of income tax.
00:10:50
Speaker
You pay 9pm the pound on a student loan, but there's no upfront fees.
00:10:56
Speaker
And it was a much better outcome.
00:10:59
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.
00:11:08
Speaker
So it was a sensible policy.
00:11:09
Speaker
Everybody agreed at the time it was a sensible policy, but it was, you know, we'd broken a promise.
00:11:17
Speaker
And that's the one thing that people remember about it.
00:11:20
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.
00:11:33
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?
00:11:40
Speaker
Or do you think they are helpful for universities financially?
00:11:45
Speaker
Of course we can't get rid of them.
00:11:47
Speaker
And who is going to pay for universities?
00:11:51
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?
00:12:03
Speaker
I mean, that would be absolutely outrageous.
00:12:06
Speaker
And that was recognized by the Labour government when they introduced tuition fees.
00:12:09
Speaker
There's no question in the revolution.
00:12:12
Speaker
And it's not a burden on students.
00:12:13
Speaker
I mean, students don't pay anything.
00:12:15
Speaker
You go to university, nobody asks you to pay tuition fees.
00:12:19
Speaker
When you leave...
00:12:21
Speaker
you have taken out a student loan and it's repaid according to your income.
00:12:27
Speaker
And if you have a low income job, you don't pay anything.
00:12:30
Speaker
That was the system we introduced.
00:12:34
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.
00:12:49
Speaker
and large numbers of kids from poor families are having to take out much bigger loans than were necessary for fees.
00:12:59
Speaker
And that's what's called the worry.
00:13:02
Speaker
But I think we need to repeat the point that nobody pays fees for going to university.
00:13:08
Speaker
You pay 9p and a pound, effectively a form of graduate tax, once you've graduated and depending on your income.
00:13:17
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.
00:13:33
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?
Challenges of Leading a Third Party
00:13:44
Speaker
It was terribly difficult because we'd lost a lot of MPs.
00:13:49
Speaker
I was rarely allowed to speak in Parliament.
00:13:52
Speaker
I was only given an opportunity to ask one question.
00:13:55
Speaker
every four weeks.
00:13:57
Speaker
The third party was normally allowed two questions a week, where you can then make an impact.
00:14:05
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.
00:14:15
Speaker
Now we've got round that problem now and Ed David can make an impact.
00:14:20
Speaker
The Prime Minister's question, I didn't have that chance.
00:14:24
Speaker
And the media, of course, are not really interested in the third party.
00:14:29
Speaker
Even the lead of the Conservative Party now is finding it difficult to get media retention.
00:14:36
Speaker
We got absolutely none.
00:14:38
Speaker
And when I was leader, the main impact we made was through our leadership of the People's Vote campaign on Brexit.
00:14:46
Speaker
But it was very hard.
00:14:47
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.
00:14:58
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?
00:15:09
Speaker
Do you think Sered Davy will find it even harder to sort of get the Lib Dem message across now?
00:15:16
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.
00:15:32
Speaker
And that's very helpful to the Lib Dem.
00:15:34
Speaker
It's also helpful to Labour.
00:15:37
Speaker
So when we have to defend our 72 seats come the next general election, in all likelihood, we'll be facing two conservatives.
00:15:49
Speaker
Now, what might happen is that Farage takes over the Conservative Party.
00:15:55
Speaker
I mean, he clearly wants to do that.
00:15:57
Speaker
A lot of his activists have infiltrated the Conservative Party in the way that Jeremy Corbyn did with Labour.
00:16:05
Speaker
And it's quite possible that they may just complete a takeover and the Conservative Party will be subsumed into reform.
00:16:16
Speaker
I suspect that if that happens, they will get a short term boost because the two right wing parties will now be one.
00:16:26
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.
00:16:35
Speaker
partly because of Brexit.
00:16:37
Speaker
More generally, there isn't the same appetite, I think, for populist politics in the UK as there is in the United States.
00:16:44
Speaker
We don't have the same level of polarization and hatred between parties that the Americans have.
00:16:51
Speaker
So I think I wouldn't say we're sitting pretty.
00:16:57
Speaker
We have a lot of challenges.
00:17:00
Speaker
I don't think the Lib Dems have to worry about Nigel Farage.
00:17:04
Speaker
This is a worry for Kemi Badenow.
00:17:08
Speaker
How likely do you think it is that Farage will take over the Conservatives?
Could Nigel Farage Reshape the Conservative Party?
00:17:12
Speaker
I would give it quite a high probability.
00:17:14
Speaker
I mean, it could happen through various ways.
00:17:18
Speaker
It could happen through infiltration of the Tory membership, leading to an electoral pact, which Farage would dominate.
00:17:29
Speaker
It could happen simply through merger and takeover.
00:17:32
Speaker
I mean, there are different ways in which this could happen.
00:17:34
Speaker
I mean, I, as you know, I'm in Lib Dem.
00:17:37
Speaker
I got to the Lib Dems through the SDP, which is a breakaway from the Labour Party.
00:17:42
Speaker
And those two parties then had a pact initially and then merged.
00:17:47
Speaker
And we could see the same thing happening on the right of British politics.
00:17:52
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.
00:18:06
Speaker
More to do with the Lib Dems.
00:18:07
Speaker
Do you ever think the Lib Dems have a chance of being in Downing Street?
00:18:13
Speaker
And do you think Sered Davy is the man to do this?
00:18:17
Speaker
Well, we've been in Downing Street before, because we started this conversation talking about the coalition.
00:18:22
Speaker
So we've been in government.
00:18:23
Speaker
We know what it's like.
00:18:24
Speaker
We've actually provided a good, stable government.
00:18:30
Speaker
Ed Davey is a competent guy.
00:18:32
Speaker
I mean, he was in the coalition cabinet with me.
00:18:34
Speaker
He's had major responsibilities and was, I think, pretty effective.
00:18:40
Speaker
So why not?
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:46
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?
Farage's Influence on Lib Dems and Labour
00:18:57
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?
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:10
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.
00:19:19
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.
00:19:33
Speaker
And Mitterrand was very clever and he divided the...
00:19:39
Speaker
kind of fascist type National Front from the French Conservatives and he destroyed the French Conservatives.
00:19:46
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.
00:19:56
Speaker
And I think the same thing is true of Farage.
00:19:58
Speaker
I mean, it's terrible.
00:20:01
Speaker
prospect for the government, if that's what he ever became.
00:20:05
Speaker
But tactically, it's actually quite helpful to the Lib Dems and Labour, for that matter.
00:20:13
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.
00:20:21
Speaker
So we thought perhaps to ask you, should Scotland have independence?
00:20:26
Speaker
And by extension, also, what are the SNP's chances of being in power come their 2026 election?
What Lies Ahead for Scottish Independence?
00:20:35
Speaker
Well, the SNP basically destroyed themselves before the last general election.
00:20:43
Speaker
They lost most of their MPs.
00:20:46
Speaker
They will bring back support because people already get a disillusion with the Labour government, Westminster Labour government.
00:20:54
Speaker
And on the back of that, the SNP may well win back some of their seats at Holyrood.
00:21:00
Speaker
But I think they've long since passed the peak of
00:21:03
Speaker
that they had with Alex Salmon and subsequently.
00:21:09
Speaker
I think it's very unlikely we'll see another SNP government for quite some time.
00:21:15
Speaker
And people experienced when they were in power in Holyrood, they actually made a lot of mistakes.
00:21:23
Speaker
Things like there was a decline in the quality of schools, performance of the education system, the NHS went backwards.
00:21:35
Speaker
It wasn't a terribly popular government.
00:21:39
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.
00:22:03
Speaker
So that, you know, 40%, 45% of the Scottish electorate probably do genuinely favour independence, but 40 to 45% is not a majority.
00:22:16
Speaker
And there's very little sign that it's going to get much beyond that.
00:22:21
Speaker
So I think the simple answer to your question is that...
00:22:24
Speaker
Scottish nationalism lead to independence is probably quite a long way off.
00:22:32
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.
00:22:44
Speaker
So Vince Cable, thank you very much for coming on the podcast today.
00:22:48
Speaker
It was a fascinating discussion.
00:22:49
Speaker
We learned a lot more about the inner workings of Taleb Dems and some predictions for the future.
00:22:55
Speaker
Okay, thank you.
00:22:58
Speaker
Oh yes, and a big thank you for coming on as well.
00:23:02
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.
00:23:11
Speaker
Okay, thank you very much.
00:23:13
Speaker
Thank you.