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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Tories could be real winners from return to tribalism, Vince Cable warns Fabians
May 15, 2011 2:00 PM
• [May 14] Sunder Katwala writes: VINCE Cable, the LibDem Business Secretary, was an unannounced surprise guest as the Fabian progressive fightback conference, joining Labour's elections coordinator Andy Burnham at the opening session of the conference as it took the temperature of British politics after the May 2011 elections. Vince Cable said he thought tribalism in British politics had reached a new pitch, and suggested this would suit the Conservatives most:
" . . We have reverted to an extraordinarily tribal way of looking at politics. We all paid lip service to the local contests. Good councillors and bad councillors were treated the same way. This was a referendum on national government. That risks there being no respect for local government - both libraries, which are a local issue, and the NHS, which isn't . . "
Cable suggested that the Conservatives would be the main beneficiaries of a tribal and polarised politics"
" . . Tribalism has always been part of politics, but it is now at a different pitch. Some in all parties like Tony Blair, Cameron, many Liberal Democrats have tried to have a more open, less tribal politics, but we now have a very rancourous return of political tribalism.
The question is where does it lead? We have a lot of people in this country who will be disenfranchised in a much more tribal political culture. In the short-term, it is very bad news for my party. We get very badly hammered if politics retreats into its core votes, though we did discover we had a core vote of our own of around 15%. If you had asked me what our core vote was a year ago, I would have said it was a lot lower than that.
My question to the Labour party would be this. [Ask yourselves], in that return to a more strongly tribal politics, which party is best placed to mobilise 40% of the vote, with the ground machine and the funding base to do that? If you think its the Labour Party, then I would say you are going in the right direction . . "
Cable was warmly received by the Fabian audience when he made his surprise appearance during the event. He spoke of how he had always been committed to engaging with Fabians and debates across the Labour and LibDem party boundaries. His call for a less polarised and caricatured debate about the causes of the economic crisis implied a distancing from the Liberal Democrats leading partisan attacks on Labour's record, though Cable defended his own track record on arguing against a 'back to business as usual' approach to the crisis.
But Cable was criticised and challenged from the Fabian members when he described the differences between the major parties over spending cuts as "an extraordinary ideological war around microscopic differences over spending cuts", and was challenged over why he had changed his mind about the need for early spending cuts in particular . .
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