Red Box - Times Online's Westminster blog

Vince Cable goes solo after Daily Mail fanbase

It was clever, funny and powerful enough to be a leader's speech. Vince Cable, suddenly an elder statesman of the British political scene, was showing off his peculiarly effective speaking technique - reassuringly unpolished and unprofessional - at the Liberal Democrat spring conference. Aides said he had spent a long time in his hotel room beforehand practising how to look spontaneous. They probably shouldn't have done.

It was love: the minute's standing ovation would have lasted much longer if the bossy chairwoman on stage had not told the auditorium to shut up so they could debate motion F16, changes to the party's position on legal aid. As we filed out, it was impossible not to wonder what might have been if Vince had stood for the leadership.

While Nick Clegg is still struggling to define himself - and aides admit that he hasn't really managed it yet - Vince is making his own private pitch for Middle England, designed to attract traditionally un-Liberal Democrat Daily Mail readers. He is attacking the City and it's "whine of self-pity" (ironic given Cable's background as an economist in the oil industry), picking a fight with Tesco by accusing them of tax avoidance, and telling foreign millionaires who don't want to pay British taxes to go home.

His pitch is as the man to fight vested interest on behalf of the average family and Paul Dacre:

We cannot tolerate a two-nation society divided between the taxpayers and the tax dodgers. The extent of tax avoidance amongst many rich people has become a national scandal.

Cable's ambitions did not disappear when he stepped down as acting leader. He has a fanbase and an ego, and is not yet sure how to feed either one. This is potentially a problem for Clegg in the future, and he needs to show the delegates when he stands up at the podium tomorrow why he, and not Cable, is now leader.

Did Vince Cable stop Richard Branson from getting Northern Rock?

Vince Cable's powers of political assassination are becoming legendary, so how far is the Brutus of the Liberal Democrat party responsible for toppling Richard Branson's Virgin bid?

Cable's assaults introduced onto the political agenda three questions: would the taxpayer get value for money; would the profits go through an offshore account and whether Branson personally could be trusted. A politically incendiary cocktail - and one the Tories have almost entirely steered clear of.

The first phase of Cable's attack came on November 18, when he asked why taxpayer's money should be used to help a Branson bid. On November 27 he suggested Virgin would "run rings around the Treasury", then at the start of December he predicted "catastrophic losses if Richard Branson's hedge-fund friends get their hands on Northern Rock."

But it got really personal - and interesting - on December 13. Speaking in the Commons, he said of Branson:

"I don't want to run the man down.... There is good reason to believe that the people who have to stump up the money for his consortium may well not regard him as a fit and proper person to run a public company - let alone a bank and let alone be responsible for £30 billion of public money."

Ouch. After Christmas, the body blows continued. Branson had become Gordon Brown's "mate", and someone who would put Northern Rock profits through a Caribbean tax haven. But the piece de resistance was an article in the Mail on Sunday, knife freshly sharpened:

- "(Sir Richard) is a dashing entrepreneur with a Rolls-Royce publicity machine",

- "Sir Richard nor his partners come from the Mother Teresa school of business management. They are in this for what they can get out of it"

- "Sir Richard insists he pays tax here on his UK earnings, Virgin Holdings is registered in Switzerland, not Britain. And are the rest of Sir Richard's consortium colleagues registered for tax purposes in the United Kingdom?"

Cue angry letter from Sir Richard. His people, however, were unable to say which Virgin vehicle would own the shares in the new company and claimed that Cable's comments were part of a campaign to nationalise the bank. While this damage was being done, the government seemed to be holding out for an ever better deal: whether this was the "Cable effect" at work behind the scenes we may never know. One factor is unknown: how seriously the government took the threat of large shareholders to block the Virgin offer, which would have diluted their holdings, in the courts.

But the last word goes to Charlie Whelan, now Gordon's man in the unions, in a PR Week column from January 23.

"It is a great relief for Labour, then, that the Liberal Democrats are the ones proposing nationalisation, although it is probably illegal under EU rules. Vince Cable may have made all the running as temporary Lib Dem leader but he will be losing media support with this left-wing line."