ConVincing Cable

In the days of Paddy Ashdown’s leadership of the Liberal Democrats, his staff were always having to struggle, usually without much luck, to persuade the broadcast media to have any LibDem MPs other than Paddy on their programmes – which risked creating the impression that the party was a bit of a one-man band.

How things have changed now that Vince Cable is popping up all over the place, and seems to have become a regular on programmes like Newsnight and Question Time.

But he’s only the deputy leader, so what’s going on?

Is it just that, as former chief economist at Shell (and one of the ever-diminishing number of MPs who’ve ever had a serious career outside politics), he talks more sense about economics than most politicians?

Or maybe they're hoping he’ll come up with another gem like his ‘Stalin to Mr Bean’ quip about Gordon Brown.

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t strike me as being very good news for new leader Nick Clegg, who still needs to raise his public profile and could surely do with as much exposure as Vince is getting