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Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
The Guardian's Saturday interview: Vince Cable
May 21, 2011 11:58 AM
• [May 21] Aida Edemariam writes: 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 . .
Cable would be the first to point out that not only are [we] 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:
"I think it is not understood that the British economy has declined by 6 or 7% - it is now 10% below trend. . . We are actually a poorer country, mainly because of the banking crash, the recession that followed it, and partly due to the squeeze we are under due to the changing balance of the world economy. Britain is no longer one of the world's price setters. It is painful. It is a challenge to us in government to explain all that, and it is a pity that the political class is not preparing the public for it to understand how massive the problem is."
. . "All three major parties have had their brand damaged in the last year. The Labour party has suffered I think probably worse - its reputation for economic competence has been destroyed. The Tories spent years trying to progress from being nasty to nice, and that was being reversed by the attacks in the AV campaign. We lost trust by the fact that we're in government and haven't been able to deliver all that was expected. The challenge is to get on with the positive things."
Right now, it seems like quite a challenge.
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