Experience and a reforming spirit could make Cable the leader Lib Dems need

Is age a valid criterion for determining whether Sir Vince Cable’s bid for the Liberal Democrat leadership is a credible one (your report, 21 June)?

Perhaps it is a less significant factor than the dilemma which has faced his party since the time of Lloyd George. Does it want to be a party of government or a party of protest? Certainly the MP for Twicken- ham has experience of a coalition government from 2010 to 2015 as the Business, Innovation and Skills minister.

He must take some credit for using his party’s influence to create the triple lock on pensions increases and raising the threshold for which the lower paid are liable for taxation. He deserves some credit, too, for using his expertise in economics and industry to begin a reform of the banking system after the financial nightmare of the 2008 crash.

Against that, of course, he will be forever tainted by the introduction of tuition fees, a broken pledge by his party which did so much to dent its electoral fortunes for the first half of this decade, and possibly beyond. His indiscretion over the B-sky B takeover bid did nothing to enhance whatever reputation for competence he had. After that he never quite recovered the respect of his coalition partners.

Sir Vince was once described as the “moral compass of the coalition”. It would be wrong to belittle his radical credentials simply because he was prepared to work, albeit with difficulty, with the Conservatives.

His parliamentary acumen will always be best illustrated by his famous jibe about Gordon Brown in 2007: “The House has noted the transformation of the Prime Minister, in a matter of weeks, from Stalin to Mr Bean.”

The fact that younger voters seem to have taken to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during the recent election campaign does show that integrity and vigour can sometimes compensate for longevity. It was probably Mr Corbyn’s lack of experience of government that denied his party a better result on 8 June.

Mr Cable, a politician who knows Scotland well, needs to show that he can combine his experience with a reforming spirit that can change his party’s fortunes.