CABLE’S FEARS FOR WALES
The scale of the collapse in the electoral fortunes of the Lib Dems since 2005 is startling, writes David Williamson, but new UK Lib Dem told him why he is convinced that his party and its values are needed in Britain today
BRITAIN is heading towards disaster with Brexit and Wales is already suffering the consequences of having the Liberal Democrats out of Government, according to the party’s new UK leader.
Vince Cable has taken the reins of the Lib Dems at a time when it has no MPs in Wales and just one Assembly Member.
Mr Cable, who lost his seat in 2015, but returned to the Commons in this year’s snap election, points to the UK Government’s decision – announced as parliament broke up for the summer recess – that the long-awaited electrification of the Great Western main line from Cardiff to Swansea would not go ahead.
He said: “I think it’s one of the many illustrations of how we’ve gone backwards since we moved from a coalition with the Lib Dems in it to a purely Conservative Government. It’s a rather stark reminder that there was a big difference.”
Electrification to Swansea was confirmed in 2012 and was described by one business consultant as the “most significant investment in Welsh rail since the Severn Tunnel”.
Mr Cable said: “I’m a very strong believer in investment in the railways. I don’t think HS2 should be at the expense of good regional investment... The southwest and south Wales are particularly badly connected and they should have priority... We shouldn’t be squeezing out big investments that are crucial to the connectivity of Britain and ending the relative isolation of key parts of it like South Wales. It should be absolutely one of our priorities.”
He also laid out his strong support for the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon going ahead.
The energy-generating project was given an enthusiastic thumbsup by the independent Hendry Review in January, but it is still uncertain whether it will become reality.
Mr Cable praised former Conservative Energy Minister Charles Hendry, who led the review, as a “very sensible man”, adding he was “absolutely right”.
He said: “It provides a reliable, relatively cheap source of electrici- ty pretty much indefinitely... It’s exactly the kind of sensible, longterm sustainable energy option which we should be pursuing and I’m very much behind it.”
Describing the delay in the project getting the final go-ahead, he said: “This may be partly as a result of political weakness. It may be Treasury conservatism.
“I don’t want to make too technical a point, but what tends to happen is they apply very high discount rates which means that very good long-term projects never happen and this is simply bad economics.”
Brexit is a top concern for the Lib Dem leader and he has no confidence in the Government’s approach to the negotiations.
He said: “[It’s] absolutely shambolic. It reveals the extent to which the Brexit project was never thought through. They didn’t appreciate the level of detail. Pursuing this extreme form of Brexit, which they are doing, is actually a very, very, very complicated business – enormous numbers of regulations, regulatory agencies are having to be reinvented.
“It’s way, way beyond the capacity of the civil service to cope with it and the Government are clearly unprepared for having to have thousands of civil servants even to do the basic minimum. [It] is an absolute, complete and total mess.”
Making the case for a second referendum, he said: “The Lib Dems have argued what we should be doing right now is trying to keep the positive elements of the European Union – the customs union, the single market, the common approach to research, the regional aid that we benefit from, the strong environmental standards and so on. But if that can’t happen – and I’m pessimistic it will happen – then the public need to have a choice at the end of the negotiations.
“Do you want to press on with Brexit or do you want to stay where we are, and that’s where the second referendum comes in. It isn’t an attempt to redo the last one.
“It’s confronting people with the choices which we will clearly face at the end of the process.”
He is scathing about the UK Labour leadership’s handling of Brexit, saying: “A lot of people, young people especially who got behind Labour at the last election believing they were pro-European are having a very nasty shock.”
First Minister Carwyn Jones has flagged up the example of Norway as an option. The country is not a member of the EU but participates in the single market.
Mr Cable said: “He’s able to because he’s got his own independent base in Wales.”
He argued that if Welsh Labour MPs were “equally independent” then Mr Corbyn’s approach would be “somewhat undermined”.
Pressing for a cross-party approach to Brexit, he said: “I want to see more cross-party collaboration. Our approach is constructive, not destructive. We’re happy to work with Labour, Tories, nationalists to just try and get a better outcome because we’re heading to a disaster at the moment.”
A majority of voters in Wales backed Brexit in last year’s referendum but Mr Cable suspects attitudes will change as the impact of losing EU funding is understood.
He said: “Wales is potentially going to be very badly affected... I think as that begins to sink in we get some rethinking.”
A cross-party House of Lords report recently urged the UK Government to “bite the bullet” ahead of Brexit and replace the Barnett formula used to allocate Treasury cash to the Welsh Government with one that reflected the real levels of need in Wales.
Mr Cable said the controversy over Barnett underlined the “unsatisfactory nature of the British constitutional structure,” saying: “We’re sort of halfway to being a federal country and it stirs up these frustration about the allocation of resources.”
He said the £1bn deal negotiated by Northern Ireland DUP to prop up Theresa May’s administration had “made a complete nonsense of any sense of fairness between the different nations of the United Kingdom”.
The party has just 12 of the 650 MPs in the House of Commons and Mr Cable hopes that members who lost their seats this year – including former leader and fellow ex-cabinet member Nick Clegg – return to Parliament.
He said: “He probably has a better understanding of the workings of Europe than anybody else in British politics.”
VINCE Cable did not need to stand for parliament when Theresa May called the snap election this year.
This 74-year-old former Business Secretary could have furthered his successful career as an author, taken up lucrative directorships and professorships and enjoyed a comfortable retirement.
Instead, he has jumped back onto the frontline of politics and taken the reins of a party which has just 12 MPs – none of whom has a Welsh seat.
By returning to the Commons and embracing the task of leading the Lib Dems forward he is casting a vote of confidence in their future at a time when many activists are still reeling from the pounding the party took after its half decade in coalition with the Conservatives.
Back in 2005, the Lib Dems won 62 seats under Charles Kennedy. In 2010, there was the “Cleggmania” which erupted around Nick Clegg’s performance and 57 MPs were elected.
The low point came in 2015 when a mere eight Lib Dems made it to the Commons, but this year’s election was painful for Welsh activists.
Ceredigion was lost to Plaid Cymru by just 104 votes, and the party has only one person in the Assembly – Education Secretary Kirsty Williams. On the Westminster map, the former Lib Dem strongholds of Montgomeryshire and Brecon and Radnorshire are deep blue.
Mr Cable, who experienced the pain of losing when he lost his seat in 2015, is adamant that the Lib Dems have an important contribution to make to UK politics and he wants the party to shape Britain once again.
When asked about a return to Government, he said: “I will certainly aim in that direction. I’m very ambitious for the party.
“I think we can make a big breakthrough potentially. I think a lot of people are craving for somewhat saner, more moderate policies than they’ve been offered by either of the two major parties at the moment so I think the sky’s the limit.”
However, he acknowledged there was “rebuilding” to do first.
In June nearly 2.4 million backed the proudly pro-EU party across the UK and it gained 7.4% of the vote. In Wales, the Lib Dems won just 4.5% of votes cast, behind Plaid on 10.4%, the Conservatives on 33.6% and Labour on 48.9%.
A crumb of comfort was that they beat Ukip. The Lib Dems won the votes of 71,039 people, compared to the 31,376 (2%) who backed the party which had done so much to secure Brexit.
Mr Cable talks up the chances of retaking Ceredigion.
He said: “Mark Williams was a great MP. He lost very narrowly.
“I’m pretty confident next time he’ll get back.”
Activists are encouraged that the decline in MPs has not been mirrored by a fall in membership. In April it reported it had doubled its number of members since the 2015 election and now had 91,100 on the rolls.
Mr Cable said: “I want to get the Lib Dems right back to the centre of British politics. I want to build up our vote share very substantially – I remember at one point we got up to 23%, that was 2010.
“A lot of analysis shows that if people had confidence that we could win we would attract about 40% of the public. So there is a massive constituency out there that we need to mobilise and that’s my ambition.”
He has high praise for Brecon and Radnorshire AM Ms Williams and the role she plays in the Assembly.
Mr Cable compares the role she plays in the party to Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader who is based in the Edinburgh parliament but enjoys something approaching superstar status in UK Tory circles.
When asked if he would like to see Ms Williams one day in Westminster, he said it was “up to her” and he stressed he believed in devolution.
He said: “Just like Ruth Davidson in Scotland, we’ve got Kirsty Williams in Wales being very, very effective on the ground. If she chooses to come to Westminster she’d be a very positive addition but I don’t want to minimise the importance of having good, strong leadership in Wales itself.”
He sees a big role for former leader Tim Farron in the immediate future.
“He revived the party’s morale enormously, he built up our membership to record levels and he is very keen to be involved,” he said.
Mr Farron – who was scrutinised during the election about his beliefs concerning abortion and same-sex relationship – said in his resignation statement that “to be a political leader – especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 – and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me”.
Mr Cable stressed that Christians were still welcome in the Lib Dems.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I would be appalled if they weren’t.
“The whole point about liberalism is you respect different individual standpoints, some of which are religious, some of which are not.
The values of liberalism, he argues, are profoundly relevant to the present age.
He said: “One of the effects of modern technology is to empower individuals and break up the traditional formations that existed. There is a big demand I think to have those individual freedoms properly defended and enhanced.
“Traditional [but modified liberalism] is something we very much need and it’s not represented by the two other parties. The Tories, particularly with Theresa May have become very authoritarian and I think the Labour party are not interested really in individualism as opposed to collective action.”
He relishes the battle of ideas but this return to the green benches of the Commons has come as a surprise.
“I didn’t know I was going to start again because I didn’t know we were going to have an early election,” he said. “I rather believed Theresa May when she said there wasn’t going to be one. Anyway, it’s happened and I’m back with a good majority and now with this major role in the party so I’m girding for action.”
If he can revive the Lib Dems as a major political force he will have earned his place in party history as the leader who rescued them from the edge of disaster.
VINCE Cable’s return to the Commons and his appointment as leader of the UK Liberal Democrats represents his re-emergence on the political frontline – but he will have to fight for airtime.
The Lib Dems are no longer the third biggest party in UK politics. That title belongs to the SNP.
Their status as a 12-person groups means he does not have a guaranteed slot to ask questions during Prime Minister’s Questions.
Likewise, if its spokespeople want to get on the morning news shows to speak on a subject, they will find they are in competition with experts from universities, charities, industry bodies and campaign groups who may be judged to possess at least as strong credentials to merit being heard.
However, Liberalism is a distinct political philosophy and as Brexit nears and the future relationship between the UK’s nations is debated, the contemporary representatives of this sometimes powerful tradition will articulate a distinct perspective.
Mr Cable does not believe that the policies of either Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn offer the solutions the country needs, and he does not hide his fear that at present we are heading towards a Brexit disaster.
Many of his contemporaries will have been enjoying retirement for a considerable number of years but he has climbed back into the ring for one more round. Even people from other political tribes will admire his tenacity.
The question of whether he can revive the electoral fortunes of the Lib Dems is up for debate. The party does not have a single MP in Wales and just one AM.
The Lib Dems shared power with Labour in the first Assembly and David Lloyd George laid the foundations of the welfare state and led the country through World War I as Prime Minister. It is unclear whether the forces of Welsh Liberalism that played such a part in shaping the history of Britain and beyond are flickering out or ready for a new and significant revival.
Many Lib Dems would have hoped that the millions of people who wanted the UK to remain in the EU would have flocked to back their party in June election. Mr Cable has laid out the rationale for a second referendum to give people the final say, and it is possible that stronger public support will build for this option as the negotiations progress and a clear picture what may await emerges.
It is also possible that the ideological positions of both Labour and the Conservatives will harden during the months of debate ahead and people will look for a different option. There are tens of thousands of Lib Dem activists who will strive to persuade them to turn yellow.
The party has an important contribution to make in the debate about protecting civil liberties at a time of cyberwarfare and a renewed terrorist threat. Mr Cable will win attention – and potentially arguments and votes – if he can put forward ideas that address the true anxieties of a diverse country.
The party is in a fight for its survival but the passion of its supporters will not easily be snuffed out.