Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Now that I have attracted your attention, I'll lead with an answer. If there is a Churchill in our moment of financial need, to withstand the advancing hordes of neo-liberal meltdown is is Vince Cable. He has just emerged as far away the most admired politician in the recent Politics Home survey.
Andrew Rawnsley reports that:
His predictions of the financial crisis, and performance during the mayhem in the markets, have clearly impressed the political experts and insiders.
He gets a predictably high score from Lib Dem panellists who rate him 8.5. He also impresses non-aligned panellists who give him an even better 8.6.
He has plenty of admirers among left-leaning panellists who score him at 8.0, a higher rating than they give to any member of the Cabinet.
Least generous are right-leaning panellists who award him 7.3. Even then, that is equal to the highest rating that right-leaning panellists give to Tory politicians.
New Labour, reinforced by the Gulf Warrior and WMD specialist Alastair Campbell, is putting it about that Brown has become the Churchill of our time, saving the world by his outstanding leadership. This is odd because of all the current political leaders, perhaps because he goes back longest, Brown has been the top appeaser of neo-liberalism. It was Grumpy Old Sod who put his last Mansion House speech into circulation in response to a question from Dizzy (and influenced the MSM commentariat in the process). But it goes back much further to the embrace of globalisation as the replacement of internationalism, see for example Brown's sycophantic message to Alan Greenspan when he ran the Fed (reproduced by Greenspan in his book, I don't have a copy to hand, does anyone have it?).
The problem for the Conservatives is that their leadership aspired to be more Blairite even than Brown and so they didn't warn against the bubble economy either. They too were appeasers of neo-liberalism as much as Brown. This kind of cross-party consensus to embrace the wrong course is not uncommon. Fortunately by the end of the Thirties there was a leading figure who could take the helm who was against appeasement.
Today, that man is Vince. He is the man who saw it coming and warned against it.
So what should the opposition parties do? My advice to the Lib Dems is that Clegg should stand down for three years and let Cable lead. It is what the country wants. My advice to the Tories is even less likely to be taken notice of, but in these volatile times would work like a dream. Cameron should offer the Lib Dems an electoral pact, where neither would stand against the other, in return for PR and Vince as the leader again for the next three years with Cameron and Clegg as his joint deputies, whereupon Cable would stand down and give Cameron three years as Prime Minister under the existing system.
After that there would be an election based on PR. This would have the added benefit of forcing Labour to adopt a pluralist approach as it would never rule alone again.
If I thought it could happen I'd not say so publicly. But this is the kind of move Cameron needs to make: he needs a game changer in the face of a changing game.
