Lib Dem conference: Vince Cable attacks the “headbangers”

Never a man to avoid confrontation, Vince Cable decided to tackle gossip about his conversations with Labour head on when he appeared on stage at the Lib Dem conference this lunchtime. He has ‘excellent communications with politicians across the spectrum’, he joked, then reached into his pocket for his phone, joking that he had a message from Ed.

He followed the same pattern as Tim Farron in criticising Labour’s record in government, just to make clear that the Lib Dems are fervently independent, rather than hankering after partnership with one party or another. But it was interesting that the majority of mentions for other parties in the Business Secretary’s speech were limited to criticism of Conservative ‘head bangers’. He said:

‘We have seen off the head bangers who want a hire-and-fire culture and seem to find sacking people an aphrodisiac: totally irrelevant in a country with flexible labour markets which have created over a million private sector jobs in the last two years.