Okay, so he’s one of nine listed, alongside The Metric Martyrs, John Sergeant and Boris Johnson (this is the Telegraph, after all) – but still when was the last time a Liberal Democrat earned such an accolade from the paper?
Dubbed “Dr Doom” for his (accurate, as it turned out) predictions of economic meltdown, the man the Lib Dems saw as too old, bald and boring to be their leader, has had the best year of any British politician. Oracle-like, Vince, 65, warned us of the mounting problems at Northern Rock, that the nation’s “ticking timebomb of debt” would explode when it did, and that the sub-prime mortgage fiasco would leapfrog the Atlantic. The bad news is that he expects recovery to take a decade.
Old, bald and boring?!
There goes that old zombie lie that Vince was beaten in a leadership election, though. We really need to respond to this bollocks: Vince never stood for the leadership, so the opinion of the party membership on his suitability or otherwise for the role is neither here nor there. I know we all know that, but they don’t, apparently.
Quite. I don’t think it was Lib Dems who thought Vince was too old, bald and/or boring. I think it was Vince who felt that the media would probably depict him as old (his age is a matter of fact), bald (there is photographic evidence on this subject) and boring (which he is not).
Vince wouldn’t have been able to cultivate his position as Guru of Economics if he was Leader. The media would treat him differently, and he wouldn’t be able to focus so narrowly (and so less successfully) on his specialist subject.