Vince Cable has succeeded by one measure at this year’s Lib Dem conference: he’s actually managed to make news. With his Boris-esque aside in his speech today, that Tory Brexiteers are guilty of inflicting ‘years of economic pain justified by the erotic spasm of leaving the EU’, he has, however briefly, drawn attention to a conference that few will be attending, and even fewer will realise is happening; a conference at which the highlight so far has been anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller telling the crowd of assembled Lib Dems that she’s not a Lib Dem.
His quip does, nevertheless, reek of desperation. After their bruising years in coalition, the Lib Dems had hoped, after Brexit, that they could turn themselves into the party of the 48 per cent. But the 48 per cent didn’t get the memo: in 2017, the Lib Dems’ vote share actually went down and Cable was drafted in to bring the party back from the brink.
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