InVinceCable We Trust

[Via Wadds]

As the Lib Dems and the Tories negotiate over power-sharing in number 10 the question that’s being asked by the Tory-supporting Telegraph no less, is “could George Osborne be sacrificed for Vince Cable?”

And so InVinceCable, the apolitical campaign that is seeking to instigate conversations around the need for a qualified candidate to hold the position of Chancellor, moves into a new phase.

“Well, we wanted to wait awhile for fear of calling it too early, but now that it’s the afternoon of the day after, it’s clear. We have undoubtedly got ourselves a hung parliament, which is most excellent news for the country. Why? Because now Vince Cable can be chancellor.”

But maybe we need to be careful what we wish for – economic vision and leadership becomes an even more critical in a hung parliament. Yesterday was not a good day on the financial markets, particularly for banking stocks.

Cable, with his tough talking on the deficit and banking reform, must have a role in the Cabinet and the Treasury in the event of a power sharing agreement.

“The coming week will be characterised by political machinations […] and this is just the moment then that the InVinceCable We Trust campaign comes into its own. So on Sunday 9 May, which also happens to be Vince’s 67th birthday, we’d like everyone to blog and comment and tweet and write to MPs of all colours to demand that Vince Cable be made chancellor.”

Follow @InVinceCable and visit the InVinceCable web site for more information about how to get involved.

Photo via LibDems on Flickr.

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Rory Cellan-Jones took the opportunity to present the InVinceCable website to viewers of BBC 24 this lunchtime. (BBC 24 News isn’t available on iPlayer, but if we can get hold of the video or a still we’ll post it here.)

Rory is covering Election 2012 from a digital / social media perspective. Having referenced our campaign in a blog post on the 24th March, Rory obviously considers the work we’re all doing on the campaign to have achieved a certain momentum warranting the BBC’s attention.

Perhaps it was our making Vince the Mayor of Number 11 Downing Street?! Perhaps it’s our new tongue-in-cheek video? Perhaps it’s because our Crowd Flutter had William Hill suspend bets and then shorten the odds on Vince becoming Chancellor? Perhaps it’s everything, little, cheeky or more substantial, that we’re all getting stuck in to.

Please do register your interest in the campaign by completing the short form on our website, or joining our Facebook group, or following our tweets, or wearing our Twibbon, or all of these and more! BBC or not, we’re only as successful as the number of voices we can bring together.

Our objective is simple: To harness a groundswell of the UK electorate such that, in the event of a hung parliament, the Prime Minister has no choice but to invite Vince Cable to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Thanks.

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Sean O’Grady writes a super commentary article pivoting around the prospect of a hung parliament in today’s Independent under the title “Get ready for Vince in Number 11“.

There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about what will happen in the hung parliament that now seems inevitable. The misunderstanding is that Nick Clegg will find it difficult to extract concessions from Gordon Brown and that a Lib-Lab coalition would be tricky to put together. He won’t and it wouldn’t. In fact it has the air of inevitability about it. If he wants, Clegg can have the alternative vote, he can get Vince Cable into the Treasury, himself a nice cabinet job and junior posts for others, and, far more important, an agreed four-year programme for economic recovery and reducing the budget deficit.

Sean completes this paragraph with the assertion “Job done”. We love his optimism, but we have a long way to go yet, including the need to coalesce and focus public sentiment on this outcome.

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The title of this post is taken directly from an article in today’s Times. It appears that online voters are representative of the 1.7m viewers of the Chancellors’ Debate given that he won the debate and accrued mostly positive ratings from the traditional media too (see our last post about the view from the US press).

However, for some reason best known to the editor of the Times article, they cut a quote from a Tweet by business and tech journalist @chrisgreen. See if you can spot the difference!

As quoted in the Times:

I’m a paid-up card-carrying member of the Conservatives. Vince Cable for Chancellor #askthechancellors.

Original Tweet:

I’m a paid-up card-carrying member of the Conservatives, but even I have to say: Vince Cable for Chancellor #invincecable #askthechancellors

Oh well, guess we’ll have to keep plugging away until the traditional media takes note.

Later today, the Twittersphere took some time to poke fun at the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, who reportedly complained about the clapping from the audience to contributions from Dr. Cable.

Wow! Did he really want Krishnan to stop people clapping, to stop them from showing their appreciation? David, that’s kinda what an audience is for… kinda what they do. And this story also made the Times today: “Tories take fright from viewers’ reaction to Vince Cable in debate“.

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The New York Times published a rather splendid profile of Vince Cable yesterday: “The Rumpled Sage“. It’s worth a read.

It starts with this:

An unlikely character, bald and blunt, a “good bloke” in native parlance, has emerged as a pivotal figure in Britain’s May election, at once the country’s most popular politician and a possible chancellor of the Exchequer in the plausible event of a hung Parliament.

And it ends with this:

Cable’s got something going on. Whether it’s enough to lift the Liberal Democrats from their 63 seats is unclear. But a hung Parliament, in which neither Labour nor the Tories can form a government, is more likely than in any recent election. That could put Cable in a position of power, about as good an outcome as I can imagine.

And the stuff in between is cracking. Spread the word.

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For some odd reason I didn’t receive the week before last’s Economist until this week. Which was a pity, because I’d have been able to tell you about the following letter before now! Here it is:

SIR – Why is the City of London so bearish about a hung parliament? If this were the outcome of the election, then the government would include either Conservatives and Liberal Democrats or Labour and Liberal Democrats. In either case, the chancellor who would command the widest respect both in Parliament and nationwide would surely be the Liberals’ current economic spokesman, Vince Cable. So why the despondency? – GRAEME ALLEN, Eaton Bishop, Herefordshire

Well said Mr Allen.

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Rory in animated enthusiasm on BBC News, and I’m sure that Jon Sopel’s occasional distraction is not caused by boredom but by his need to look at an off-camera screen to see what Rory is going on about!

And Rory mentioned the In Vince Cable We Trust campaign on his blog here. Here’s the excerpt:

1100: An hour or so before Alistair Darling stands up for what is pretty likely to be his last Budget, I’m looking at a website which aims to promote the claims of a man who is currently 16-1 with Ladbrokes to be his successor. The site is called InVinceCable, and is billed as the HQ of a campaign to get the Liberal Democrat the job of chancellor.

The site says this: “We’re not linked to or supported in any way by Vince himself, the Liberal Democrats or, indeed, any political organisation.”

It turns out to have been put together by a bunch of marketing types, one of whom is Mark Pinsent: “Down the pub one night, we started talking about whether social media would have any impact on the election,” he explained.

They all agreed that Vince would make the best chancellor – and decided to have a go. Their only weapon is the social networks – so can they make Vince go viral?

Click the image to play over on the BBC website (couldn’t find any embed code to show it here I’m afraid).

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As you’ll no doubt have seen by now, splashed across the front page of yesterday’s Observer was news that Vince has “held unprecedented and detailed talks with the top official at the Treasury about the Liberal Democrats’ economic policies – and declared himself willing to serve as chancellor after the next election.”

Wow, big news indeed.

In his blog, Benedict Brogan of the Telegraph paints a rather different picture, saying that Vince had asked for the meeting, it lasted 20 minutes and Vince was given nothing more than a “polite hearing” by the Treasury.

It’s difficult to know who to believe. Either way, it could be regarded as a neat bit of positioning by Vince, allowing him to state his happiness to act as Chancellor in a hung parliament without necessarily upsetting the LibDem party faithful.

There haven’t exactly been strenuous denials coming out of Downing Street either. Maybe Brown sees some advantages in leaving to door slightly ajar. He won’t upset his neighbour, but a few wavering voters could see the potential for a Labour Government with Vince as Chancellor, which might make all the difference come the beginning of May.

Interesting times indeed.

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Following Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s tweets yesterday (@krishgm), you can find Channel 4’s press release about the debate here. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs:

Channel 4 announces that the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, and his Conservative and Liberal shadows, George Osborne and Vince Cable, will hold a live debate on the economy the week after the budget.

The programme will be broadcast on Monday 29 March at 8pm in front of an invited audience of 200.

Krishnan responded to the tweet from @invincecable asking to be invited to the debate. He pointed out that the debate audience is likely to consist of ordinary voters rather than “activists”, and so we’ve since tweeted back to say that, yes, actually, we are indeed cross-party ordinary voters! We’ve also emailed MentornMedia, the company organising the event.

Will keep you posted! And you can follow on Twitter at #c4chancellors and #invincecable.

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