The political career of Tory patsy Vince Cable MP has been marked by duplicity. A Labour Councillor in Glasgow from 1971-74, subsequently in 1982 he defected to the breakaway SDP. As recently as 1997 he was Chief Economist for the Shell transnational oil company (renowned for human rights violations in Nigeria). In 2005, he was one of the 11 right wing Liberal Democrat front benchers who ousted Charles Kennedy as Party leader.
He came to public attention in November 2007 when acting Liberal Democrat leader by way of his supercilious ‘Stalin to Mr Bean’ jibe against the newly installed Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown – egged on in the House of Commons by the public school Hooray Henries on the Tory benches – who are now of course Cable’s political masters: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2963664.ece
Cable has repeatedly made anti-union noises – in March 2010 using a Daily Mail article to attack ‘union militancy’ and score points about party funding: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1259432/VINCE-CABLE-An-easy-way-end-strikes-pampered-BA.html
In the same month he publicly stated his support for curbing strikes in essential services on BBC ‘Any Questions’ and then in September as Business Secretary he authorised the privatisation of Royal Mail. This week with his narcissistic boasting to undercover Telegraph journalists, he has created the conditions for unfettered control of the BSkyB media empire to News Corporation owned by arch neo-con Rupert Murdoch.
Hapless Cable is a dead man walking and his survival in the Cabinet is testament to the weakness of the Con Dem coalition as well as their determination to maintain a pact of Mutually Assured Destruction by avoiding a general election until 7 May 2015.
