Peter Hoskin

Cable teaches Umunna a lesson about the past

If you were in a particularly soggy mood, you’d almost feel sorry for Chuka Umunna. He’d managed to force Vince Cable into the House this afternoon, to announce the coalition’s plans for curbing executive pay a day earlier than planned, and he must have been feeling pretty swell about it. This was, on paper, the initiative seized; a chance to prise open the Business Secretary’s differences with his Tory colleagues. But, in practice, it was something completely different. In practice, Cable dispatched his opponent with ruthless ease. You might even have found yourself in the unthinkable position of cheering him on.

A large part of it was Umunna’s petty, needling set of questions. But it’s telling just how much Cable was aided by Labour’s own record in this area, or what I called Miliband’s ‘proximity

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