Vince Cable heavy on gloom, light on strategy

VINCE CABLE presented a grim vision of the economy at the Liberal Democrat conference yesterday, but some commentators wondered whether he was more focused on economic or political strategy.
 
Facing an economic war

We probably haven't heard as dramatic a statement from a government minister about the state of the economy as Cable's comparison of the current crisis to "the economic equivalent of war", says Ben Geoghegan on the BBC. "Vince Cable has left us in no doubt how he sees it - if there are 'sunny uplands' then they are way off on the horizon."  
 
By golly it was grim, said Matthew Engel in the Financial Times. Business secretary Vince Cable was a beetle browed figure, with the "air of Presbyterian minister from the Hebrides who has just discovered a parishioner laughing on the Sabbath".
 
"Blood, tears, toil and sweat wasn't the half of it," says Engel. All he could offer was that the Lib Dems would try to ensure party fairness as "we rebuild our broken economy from the rubble". If there were empty seats in Nick Clegg's Q&A session later, it may be "because the delegates had gone back to their hotel rooms and taken cyanide".
 
Cable has matured

Yes, the maestro of the morose socked it to them, said Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail. Attaboy! Until then, we had been subjected "to a stream of vapid speakers who moaned about cuts and wanted to spend more public money".
 
Cable may not have matched Schopenhauer for pessimism, but Vinnie the glum seemed like a moose munching the last blades of autumn grass, telling us that winter was on its way. "Vince himself may be as pink as a Scotsman on a Costa Brava deckchair, but he has matured in the ministerial barrel."
 
Words without substance

Cable does have that rare gift of "rhetorical sincerity", says Polly Toynbee in the Guardian. He was right to mock the absurdities of the right, who think tax cuts for the rich will produce miraculous growth, and he was right to address the need for stringent bank reforms and the issue of executive pay. Anyone unfamiliar with Britain's true state of affairs could only nod in agreement at his wise words as he ended with a promise of "fairness and recovery".
 
The trouble is not his words but "the lack of substance behind them", says Toynbee. "The balderdash quotient is high at all party conferences." Attacking the greedy rich is an admirable novelty – but it shouldn't distract us from what is happening to the poor, "whose ranks will only multiply as the cuts bite".
 
Strategy not posturing needed

We need a growth strategy, not political posturing, says an editorial in the Daily Telegraph. Cable's gloomy speech seemed designed to send business leaders "reaching for the pearl-handled revolver", but perhaps it was a way of distancing himself from the policies of George Osborne. Cable would be taken more seriously if, instead of talking down the economy, he "concentrated on growth and told us how his department intends to foster it". ·