Vince Cable Speech Election 2017

Good morning. My name is Asi Ahmed. At the last election I stood for

Parliament for the Conservatives. Today I joined the Liberal

Democrats. APPLAUSE

Last autumn I stood on a stage of the Conservative Party and

introduced the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon. Told them of my

journey from growing up in a close-knit Muslim family in Oldham

where I ran a kebab shop was my mother to serving in the Kirk Royal

Army and the opportunities it brought me. Like I'm testing in

Rochdale fully Conservatives in 2015. I talked my belief that the

party would allow Britain to stand tall as a proud and forward-looking

nation. Get a translator I have decided to leave the party. That's

back to eight months later. I returned to resign my party

membership. I'm joining the Liberal Democrats and awe campaign for Tim

Farron and a final days of the election campaign.

APPLAUSE It is because I believe Britain

should be an outward looking country in Europe trading with the world's

largest single market. The Conservatives are risking our

prosperity with an extreme Brexit. Inspired more than the nastiness of

Nigel Farage than the needs of 21st-century British economy. The

Liberal Democrats are committed to our European future. And that is why

I am delighted to have joined the party. And that is why I am so much

happier to introduce a leading political figure who understands

that the jobs, prosperity and the future of our children we need to

stay in Europe. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in

welcoming Sir Vince Cable. APPLAUSE

Thank you very much. Welcome to the party. I think injecting a note so

has been completely missing so far from the selection, which is trying

to understand the viewpoint of the entrepreneur, of business and the

fact that it has been horribly neglected. There is somebody I have

great admiration for, not a Lib Dem, a Tory MP called Kenneth Clarke, who

had an adage that is good economics is good politics. And in the

selection that has all been thrown to the winds. -- this election. I

was still secretaries of State business at the last election and I

was competing with my opposite numbers the Tory side and the Labour

side and we all understood we had different politics and understood

why it was important to have the support and endorsement of business

and we would compete to get the support of the CBI, the FSB, the

IOD, actually not just them but the trade union Congress as well,

understanding the economic dimension and importance of business. In this

election in a strange kind of way you have one side seems to regard

business as an embarrassing lobbyist group and of no great prevalence and

on the other side as capitalist exploiters. This is not healthy.

Business wealth creation is absolutely fundamental to offer

should be trying achieve. You have got a similar cavalier approach to

basic budget economics. I was in the coalition government for five years

which was dominated by the need to merge with some fiscal credibility

from that little economic crisis. We had fiscal targets. It wasn't just

us. Alistair Darling beforehand and Gordon Brown understood the

importance of that, Ed Balls as well. We went into the last election

competing to be financially littoral. In this election law that

has gone. One party is saying two plus two equals seven and another

party says two plus two equals 22 and we are supposed to take these

propositions seriously and debate them. Not just lack of engagement

with business concerns, but racing budgetary and fiscal literacy has

gone completely out the window. I think it is very welcome albeit at

this late stage that we are getting a proper engagement with these

questions. And I was delighted that only yesterday the Economist

magazine and no doubt Theresa May would regard them as all part of

these ruthless cosmopolitans who don't live here, but nonetheless a

serious analytical magazine, addressed the issue as follows, it

said no party passes with flying colours a test of being economically

literate and understanding business, but it said the closest is the

Liberal Democrats. A few days earlier the Institute for Fiscal

Studies, which we always used to regard as the holy grail of operable

in terms of basic economic competence, it is worthwhile reading

what they said about the Labour Party, they said many of their

policies would be economically damaging and income trust for us it

talks about our estimates of fiscal revenue to set spending commitments,

it said that the Liberal Democrats are considerably more certain than

the revenue raised by Labour. And of the Conservatives they -- the

content is barely concealed. It said from the Conservatives we have

little or nothing -- contempt. The manifesto is extremely light on tax

and spending proposals. I think in terms of the deeper issues as well.

At the end of the coalition government we had emerged from that

awful crisis, we had got the recovery going, we were getting to

full employment, but we were all very well aware that there were

deep-rooted problems, British productivity was poor and therefore

wages report. We had to somehow get up out of that cycle. We were very

consciously to rebalance the economy, less dependent on the

housing market for example. Where has that been discussed? The

fundamentals of economic performance and economic growth had not made an

appearance in this election. Let me say a bit more about the

consequences of this complete blindspot as the two major parties

appear to have about economics and the rule of business. Let me just

start with the Conservative Party. Some of the things which tell us

that they and in particular at leadership level are just not

properly engaged with business concerns. If you remember, it

started with the pledge about price controls for energy, which was

rightly dismissed as economic illiteracy when it was first

proposed by Ed Miliband. It has now been adopted as mainstream economic

policy. We then had the taxation of the self-employed and an immediate

retreat when it was seen as being inconsistent with previous policies.

We have the proposals on immigration which involve a substantial

financial levy compared with a very invasive system of bureaucratic

controls. The third line premise of which the man in Whitehall knows

best. Completely contrary to the whole understanding of market

economics that the Conservatives are supposed to be believing. Then we

have the crux of this election, the issues around Brexit. I don't want

to hear until we run the referendum was in points around it, but the

simple point is we don't need to leave the European Union while at

the same time leaving the single market and Customs union. And each

of those two things as to economic applications which don't think

understand and the cost of which have not been spelt out. But I don't

recall was ever discussed in the referendum campaign. If you are a

Manufacturing company and you have a supply chain you are totally

dependent on the uninterrupted flow of goods. It isn't adequate to say

we wouldn't have an area because what matters is the common tariff

around the area. If have different levels of protection it has been

inspected each time you cross a frontier. You have improvised

arrangements in Scandinavia but even countries is removed from the core

is that the except they need to have a customs union. And yet it is

casually overthrown. We need to have no trade deals. What do they mean?

We don't know how many people followed the ignominy of Theresa

May's visits to India.