A very muggy summer for Cable’s Lib Dems

It’s August Bank holiday and Westminster is on recess so it must be time for a Lib Dem leadership story.

The leaking of this latest announcement has the whiff of another backroom deal cooked up by senior figures. Someone needs to tell them: guys! it’s 2018 not 1988!

The fact is too few people continue to pull the strings in a party of over 100,000 members, two thirds of whom joined in the last three years. If the Grandees hadn’t noticed the Liberal Democrats is a very different party now from the one is was back then.

Cable took over the Lib Dems’ top job at a difficult time last year, in less than ideal circumstances. Plus Ça Change…but that’s leading the Lib Dems for you.

The Party under performed in the 2017 general election. Since then, Cable has scored some notable electoral successes including gaining 75 seats at last year’s local elections (the most of any party) and slashing Labour’s majority in Lewisham East from 21,213 to 5,629 in June against all expectations.

On matters of policy, Cable has taken the right steps — putting dynamic former teacher Layla Moran MP in charge of a revamp of our tarnished education policy and speaking up forcefully for responsible capitalism and the need to tame ‘Tech Titans’.

The problem has not been what the Lib Dems have been saying on these issues rather than the fact that no-one has really been listening. Politics has become a giant echo-chamber and most normal people have simply switched off.

But politics isn’t fair and ultimately it will be Cable’s failure to grasp the opportunities presented by the current political situation that will hasten his eventual exit.

Firstly, there has been his failure to establish the Lib Dems as Britain’s foremost anti-Brexit movement. Some of the causes for this are structural — the party has very few MPs and no Lib Dem supporting newspapers, but some of them are tactical.

Cable has been an enthusiastic contributor to national anti-Brexit campaigns. However, these have tended to be cross-party and in some cases non-party ventures. As laudable as these may be in helping water down Brexit they have also had the effect of watering down his Lib Dem message — to the point I saw a tweet yesterday from someone who had ‘forgotten Vince Cable was Lib Dem Leader.’

And on tactics it should go without saying that if you plan to position yourself as the leader of the stop-Brexit campaign in Parliament you really can’t miss a vote on Brexit. But Cable did.

Then there is the question of how Cable has responded to the implosion of the Labour party and the Tories civil war. If I had a pound for every person who told me this was an opportunity for the Lib Dems..that would be the Party’s fundraising sorted.

Cable and Chuka Umunna have appeared inseparable all year but still no Labour MPs have been persuaded to jump ship and most likely won’t.

If this was the political version of Love Island, it’s surely the Lib Dems who got mugged off most this summer.

But being liked isn’t enough in a winner takes all contest: the Party desperately need to get out of the dreaded ‘friend zone’ if they are going to survive in British politics long term.

In recent days Cable has allowed stories to circulate which indicate he thinks the game’s up not just for him but for the party as we know it. An interesting strategy.

Ask yourself if you were a disillusioned moderate why would you invest in Cable’s Lib Dems now: if you’re anti-Brexit you get them into the bargain anyway and…er isn’t a new party about to be set up?

So if the Party is hamstrung now for the reasons outlined, what about the future?

In terms of reforming the Party Cable has the right ideas. It’s a pathetic irony that Lib Dems (in government) have been more effective at promoting diversity in the country than in our own ranks. One of the things he has done as leader is to help change that by talking up all ethnic-minority shortlists and the like. The party he leaves will be more representative in years to come thanks to the work he started.

And on party leadership rules there are many more Lib Dems outside Parliament than in so why would you want to exclude them from any future talent pool?

Finally, in 2018 traditional party membership is woefully outmoded and lowering the bar to engage and involve Lib Dem supporters makes sense.

However, neither of these two reforms address the basic question (which the party has been grappling with, oh, since roughly 1988): what are the Lib Dems for?

Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est la même chose. Roll on Conference season — and a chance of Lib Dems finding love.