#vinceforchancellor : add a hashtag to your tweets

Hard on my own piece suggesting that Vince would make a far better Chancellor than Gideon, Matthew Norman has written a far more erudite piece making the same point.


Headlined 'How often does Vince Cable have to be right before they make him Chancellor?' it's a great read. While he then goes on to suggest that Vince is nailed on to lead us into the next election (Matthew may or may not have read my New Statesman piece but he certainly hasn't seen the results of my leadership poll) it's a tribute to Vince's judgement.


Do go and read the whole thing...but here a few highlights to whet your appetite...


Vince is having another fine week for his soothsaying reputation, but he must nonetheless be sick of playing Cassandra. This business of him issuing the SOS, first being ignored, then being vindicated, and lastly receiving next to no credit for being right in the first place would irk a less curmudgeonly chap than our (Victor) Meldrovian Business Secretary...


...one pressing question today is why Osborne is Cable's boss at all. Transparently, Vince should be Chancellor, and George... well, something less important. ...


In his unflashy, steady, plodding way, Vince has left Osborne for dead as a repository of public faith on matters economic, while, as the commentator Peter Oborne has observed, he has become the Coalition's moral core. When he speaks or fashions a policy, he does so not for short-term tactical gain, be it a flattering Daily Mail headline or in response to whatever a few nebbishes told their focus group monitor over the warm Jacob's Creek in a Slough hotel conference suite, but because it is what he believes to be right. If that sounds devilishly simple, no one else with an economic portfolio on either front bench seems desperate to give it a crack. Perhaps it's too mustily old-fashioned for the young 'uns, though it seems to work for him

Good stuff isn't it.

Now, here's a thought. Next time you write a tweet or see a tweet praising the great man, why not add the hashtag #vinceforchancellor. I'm not suggesting for a minute that it will swing David Cameron. But at least it just might make him think...