Archive for vince cable
Today’s news is: Let’s all be shocked by the blatantly obvious
Story one. Dear politician, do you think people should knowingly assist others in breaking the law? What, you say ‘no they shouldn’t'? Hold the front page, I’ve got a scoop! Story two. Dear politician, might you want to lead your party one day? What, you might!? Hold the front page again. This is an amazing [...]
Ever younger Prime Ministers?
With Vince Cable’s recent interview comments reviving chatter over how old is too old to be an aspirant party leader and Prime Minister, what does the actual age profiles of our Prime Ministers look like? Here are all our Premiers from this century and the last, showing at what age they first went into 10 [...]
Vince Cable: City passivity and prejudice is still sidelining women
Vince Cable writes for the Evening Standard: One important dimension of effective boards is their ability to tap into big talent pools. In the past, these pools have been shallow and stagnant, unrepresentative of wider society. In particular, a mixture of prejudice and inertia has kept women down to derisory levels of representation: barely one [...]
The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government Works
Robert Hazell and Ben Yong’s work, The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government Works, is a very readable volume, written mostly in the style of an introductory politics textbook and based on extensive interviews with the participants, including at very senior levels. The book is well done, readable, comprehensive and has a few [...]
The Lib Dem political plan for the next year
The Queen inspires more terror than George Osborne. That is the tempting conclusion to be drawn from comparing the Queen’s Speech (volume of advanced leaks: low) with the Budget (volume of advanced leaks: high). After all, Osborne can tax you but the Queen has the Tower of London… Combined, however, they tried to set the [...]
Housing: the IPPR’s answer
Over the last week I’ve highlighted how the Britain’s love of home ownership is not based on any evidence that high home ownership brings economic success (if anything, the opposite is true), that the proportion of people living in private rented accommodation is on a long-term rise and that changes in property prices in Britain are [...]
Vince Cable on “one of the great acts of economic vandalism in modern times”
Yesterday Vince Cable gave a sweeping speech about the current state of the economy, lessons from the 1930s and the way forward. The parallels with the 1930s are in some ways obvious, but as Cable pointed out there are important differences. In particular, in the 1930s there was no similar financial crash in Britain to [...]
Sometimes newspapers do themselves no favours when it comes to political bias
Two organisations are in the news today for their views on employment law reform: The Institute of Directors, who are critical of Vince Cable and support key parts of the Beecroft report The EEF manufacturers’ association, who are broadly supportive of Vince Cable and critical of key parts of the Beecroft report Try then to [...]
