Vince Cable managed to hit all the Lib Dem spots last night with his fringe speech at the Lib Dem spring conference. He didn’t just mention the words ‘land value tax’, which set many Lib Dem heads nodding away with approval, but also managed to say ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ in Swahili, and accuse right-wing Conservatives of waging ‘jihad’ against public spending and public services. Here are three main points from his speech:
1. Cable said certain Tory ‘ideologues’ were waging ‘jihad’ against public spending.
It wasn’t clear whether the Business Secretary was attacking his Tory Cabinet colleagues or backbenchers like Liam Fox and David Ruffley when he said:
‘There is going to be pressure on public spending and I think what we have to make absolutely clear as a party that there is a difference between managing public spending in that context, we have to have financial wisdom, and the kind of thing that a lot of right-wing Conservatives are pushing for which is Tea Party, some kind of ideological jihad against public spending and public services.’
He criticised those who favour ‘so-called supply-side economics: a very ambiguous phrase’, and accused both Tories and Labour of refusing to talk about the ‘massive crisis of financial capitalism’, saying Labour reminded him of Basil Fawlty trying not to mention the Second World War to a group of German hotel guests.
2.
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