Cable a star at old friend’s expense

The Lib Dems have a new star - and it's not one of the two men fighting for the leadership of the party. Instead it's Vince Cable, stand-in leader and the party's shadow chancellor, whose crack in the Commons yesterday about Gordon Brown had the backbenches guffawing and the PM fuming. "The House has noticed the Prime Minister's remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean," he said.
Cable's quick-witted performances in the Commons have got some wiseguys in the party asking why they need either Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne as leader - the two young Turks fighting for the crown - when they have Cable.

Cable's jibes at Brown will be particularly painful because the Lib Dem is an old friend of Brown's wing of the Labour party. Long before he became an MP in 1997, Cable worked as an economic advisor to Brown's mentor John Smith, when he was Industry Secretary in the 1970s. An old Labour hand swears Cable once co-wrote a pamphlet with Brown himself - a project unthinkable today.

While Cable's star is rising, the fortunes of Chris Huhne are not looking so bright this morning. By boasting that he had gone to the Metropolitan Police about Labour's dodgy donations, Huhne, the party's environment spokesman, is seen to have stepped on the turf of his opponent Clegg, who as the Lib Dems' home affairs spokesman is supposed to deal with matters of crime and punishment. "Huhne's blown it with the Lib Dem activists," The First Post was told this morning by a party insider. "They don't like people stepping on another member's toes for the sake of a cheap headline."