Vince Cable waltzes back into political spotlight in bid to bring Lib Dems to the fore
Vince Cable had waltzed away from politics.
Following his defeat in the 2015 General Election he had settled into a new life, preparing to take up an academic post, putting the finishing touches to a novel and getting ready for a ballroom dancing championships in Blackpool.
The 74-year-old was pulled back into the game ahead of this year's snap election by his local party in Twickenham who wanted 'a known face'. He won with a majority of nearly 10,000. Six weeks later he was the new Lib Dem leader.
"When I came back I didn't expect there would be a leadership challenge in the Lib Dems," he said, speaking following an event at Birmingham City University's Centre for Brexit Studies.
"We all expected Tim Farron would continue. Leading the party is something I had always wanted to do, but the opening never came.
"Now it has and I can get on with the job of unifying the part in case we have an early election."
Unifying the party is one battle, but he admits pushing their anti-Brexit message 'in a new way' will dictate the Lib Dem's future success or failure.
Mr Farron fought the election on the basis that his party was the only one advocating what Remainers really wanted - a second EU referendum. But the tactic flopped at the polls, with the Lib Dems gaining only four seats.
Mr Cable says the campaign 'sank like a lead balloon'. "People didn't buy it and we should acknowledge that," he said, adding that a re-run of the referendum 'wasn't a popular idea because a lot of people who had voted Remain had moved on'.
"The idea of a second referendum is quite different," he tells me. "It is saying that when we get to the end of the process, we know what the Government has negotiated and we have a clearer picture of what the implications are.
"Then we get the public to endorse it or reject it if they have second thoughts.
"We should keep open that option."
Mr Cable says he believes that Britain may never leave the EU, although he insists that the Tories and the Labour party are 'working together to make sure we leave'.
"In particular both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May believe in this so-called hard Brexit, which involves the most disruptive form of leaving the EU, going further than the referendum authorised," he said.
"If they stick together then it will happen, but if the Labour party changes course, as a lot of their more moderate MPs, councillors and trade unionists want them to, then the Brexiteers may lose the political mandate in the House of Commons.
"More seriously, the technical obstacles in the form of having to renegotiate hundreds of treaties on complex issues like nuclear power and civial aviation...none of the Brexit people understood what they were getting into.
"The practical problems of preventing a dangerous crashing out in two years time are immense, which is why I'm suggesting it may never happen.
"But the priority in the next year or two should be that we keep the good elements in the EU...the single market, the customs union, environmental standards, shared research.
"To do that we will have to work across parties."
Mr Cable acknowledges that Brexit will 'dominate debate for years to come', and says it gives his party a platform to reinstate itself at the centre of British politics.
The former Business Secretary said he is convinced that the Lib Dems can mount a comeback and have a presence in areas such as the Black Country, Staffordshire and Shropshire, where he conceded they had largely become a political irrelevance.
"We haven't given up on those area and we will come back," he said.
"There's a gigantic hole in the middle of British politics. The Labour party have gone to the hard left, The Tories have got caught up in extreme anti-Europe zealotry.
"To some extent UKIP mopped up some of the unhappy protest vote in recent years, but they've now disappeared.
"It's down to us to fill that space."
I put it to him that advocating an anti-Brexit stance in an area that overwhelmingly voted to leave the EU may not be a sound way to win votes.
"There's more to it than that," he said. "We need to remind people of the good things that have come from the Lib Dems.
"During the coalition government a lot of the work we did to promote the industrial strategy was focused on the West Midlands.
"The [JLR] engine plant in Wolverhampton would never have happened had it not been for the fact that I and my colleagues were pushing for it.
"It could have gone somewhere else but we supported it. People don't associate that with the Liberal Democrats but it was us that got it through.
"It is up to us to remind people of the sensible government which did good things.
"And we could do so again if I find myself as Prime Minister. I'm sure we could deliver a bloody sight better government than people are getting at the moment."
