Vince Cable
The Return to Middle-of-the-Road Politics?
Summary
Where have middle-of-the-road politics gone? In the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany, and above all, the United States, individuals once regarded as unacceptable extremists and populists are now close to power. In this lecture, Sir Vince Cable asks, why have ‘one nation conservatives’ and their overseas counterparts diminished and is the process of polarisation irreversible?
Vince Cable
Sir Vince Cable was secretary of state for business, innovation and skills from 2010 to 2015, and he represented the constituency of Twickenham as a Liberal Democrat MP. Before entering the House of Commons in 1997, Vince studied at the University of Cambridge and received a PhD from Glasgow University. He worked in government and then in the private sector, becoming Shell’s chief economist in 1995. As an author, Sir Vince has published several books, including Money and Power (2021), which looks at the history of political figures who changed the way economic policy was made. Vince is currently Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics in the School of Public Policy and a visiting professor at Nottingham University, where he worked with the university on a collaborative project with Future learn to develop a MOOC(on line course). He is also a visiting professor at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and Honorary Fellow at Fitzwilliam College Cambridge and of the City Lit in London.
Well, we’re fortunate in the UK and in most parts of Europe and hopefully in the United States, though gun ownership creates a somewhat different dynamic, which is we don’t currently have this problem of extreme parties resorting to violence. I mean this is one of the differences between the contemporary challenges that we have which are purely political and those which occurred in the inter-war period when extreme parties advanced their cause with threats and intimidation in Germany and Italy and the countries which fell under their control. But if one wants to be pessimistic and we see continuing economic difficulties in the main Western countries, extreme parties gaining in strength, it’s certainly perfectly possible that we could start to see violence and people wanting to react to it by fighting back. Civil war is a rather emotive phrase and I don’t think we’re anything remotely near that, but that is where ultimately extreme politics leads and I sincerely hope that middle of the road parties will get back their mojo and prevent us drifting down that road.