Vince Cable: can he revive his party?

“The biggest puzzle in British politics is why the Liberal Democrats are so feeble,” said Bagehot in The Economist. Nearly half of Britons voted to remain in the European Union. “Millions of people think that Theresa May is a discredited mediocrity and Jeremy Corbyn is a dangerous fantasist.” Yet the only national party that campaigned to keep Britain in the EU, and that stands in the “open and tolerant” centre, won less than 8% of the vote at the last election. Sadly for the Lib Dems, their “biggest opportunity in decades” coincided with the party’s “implosion” as a result of the end of the coalition: signing up to austerity and higher university fees had left their core supporters feeling betrayed. And there was no recovery at the last election under Tim Farron, “arguably the weakest” party leader in recent history – known only for being “an evangelical Christian who was uncomfortable about homosexuality”.

Yet, as the Lib Dems gathered in Bournemouth for their conference this week, they had “some reasons to be cheerful”, said Andrew Grice in The Independent. “They have a grown-up in charge in Sir Vince Cable” – who was elected unopposed after Farron stood down. Cable has ministerial experience, and, as an economist who predicted the credit crunch, “more economic credibility than May or Corbyn”. When he says something, “the Westminster bubble takes notice”. This is just the moment for a Lib Dem revival, said Matthew Parris in The Times. Isn’t it likely that May’s government will come a cropper before we reach Brexit day in 2019? And that the voters, “faced with a choice between a deeply unlikeable Tory rabble and a Labour Party led by a crazy Marxist”, will be tempted to put their X in the Lib Dem box?

Cable declared in his speech on Tuesday that the Lib Dems are a future “party of government”, said Jessica Elgot in The Guardian – not just “UKIP in reverse”. His advisers insist that he is a credible potential prime minister, pointing to the shock success of liberals such as Justin Trudeau in Canada and Emmanuel Macron in France. We shall see, said Adam Boulton in The Sunday Times. With only 12 MPS, the party is now so small that it “struggles to get heard”; in the Commons it is the fourth largest party after the SNP. And Cable’s own hands “are dipped deep in the great student fees betrayal”: as business secretary, he personally brought in £9,000 fees. Worst of all, the young, radical vote the Lib Dems used to rely on has “decamped en masse” to Corbyn’s Labour. They may never re-establish themselves as the party of protest.